No, you take the core of emacs and add a pretty shell around it that adds these features you are talking about. Such as quick way to open files, and so on. There is no need to re-invent core text editing.
I don't get why people keep creating new text editors. Emacs exists, people. And it is a great text editor. These new editors look pretty and do work, but they don't even come close to Emacs. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, why not just take Emacs and add a pretty face to it?