Making Emacs popular again

I'm not convinced. Lisp is known for having almost no syntax at all, but this big specification adds quite a lot. On top of that, it is backwards compatible, so you can freely mix the old S-expressions and the new syntax.

The specification also adds "meaningful indentation" à la Python (and Haskell), with all the cumbersome interaction between tabs and spaces, and problems with copy-pasting code.

My fix to the readability problem is to indent the code properly, and split the code into separate functions as appropriate. Use an editor which does the indentation automatically, shows matching parentheses, and warns about the "silly extraneous" parentheses. It doesn't really matter if a Lisp function ends with 13 closing parentheses, as long as they are all there. You don't have to count them.

Now, if I could only think of an editor that is up to the task...