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Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#11

Post by ThePawnBreak »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #10
mfukar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting conundrum: f you don't feel like learning, can we suggest anything actually useful?

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all. To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/co…

I suggest learning Emacs because of the extensibility and the huge amount of plugins available. I don't think it would take more than a few hours to get accustomed to basic editing in Emacs (moving with C-n C-p C-f C-f, and searching as a way of navigating the file, also opening and closing files -- this should be enough to get you started).

I just tried the keys you mentioned in Emacs: they all worked (except for selecting with Shift). So End takes you to the end of the line, you can scroll using PgUp and PgDown. The reason that they are not used is that you need to get your hands of the home row to use them, which makes them unbearably slow for people used to quick editing.

I hope you'll give it a chance.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#12

Post by auganov »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #10
mfukar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting conundrum: f you don't feel like learning, can we suggest anything actually useful?

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all. To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/co…

You might like http://www.ergoemacs.org/ Anyways there's probably tons of plugins that would change key bindings to something that you'd like more. Might also want to look into cua-mode.

Maybe you can tell us why you need it to work in a console. Do you only want to edit files over there? Could try sshfs. If you're able to use X11 on your servers you might look into X11 forwarding through ssh to use Sublime too.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#15

Post by eliah-lakhin »

olgeni wrote: post #14

> alternatives to the most popular terminal-based editors such as VIM and Emacs? Emacs for X11 (Lucid or Motif bindings), and gvim of course.

Hey, but they are GUI based, arn't they? :) I want to use it in my terminal through the SSH on remote machine.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#16

Post by ctb_mg »

You should know that most people would probably consider vim as sufficiently "modern" -- it is actively maintained and still useful for many. 'vi' is the old school predecessor...

I believe vim has an "easy mode" which allows it to work as a more traditional non-modal text editor. You may want to give this a shot and then slowly ease yourself into the key chords.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#17

Post by dmm »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #10
mfukar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting conundrum: f you don't feel like learning, can we suggest anything actually useful?

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all. To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/co…

Page-up and page-down work fine in emacs. Home and End move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line, respectively.

It's clear you haven't even tried it.

Take a deep breath. Pick and editor and try and use it for a week.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#18

Post by eliah-lakhin »

dmm wrote: post #17
eliah-lakhin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all. To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/co…

Page-up and page-down work fine in emacs. Home and End move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line, respectively. It's clear you haven't even tried it. Take a deep breath. Pick and editor and try and use it for a week.

I know that these buttons work too. But this is not a convenient way of using Emacs.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#19

Post by dmm »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #18
dmm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page-up and page-down work fine in emacs. Home and End move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line, respectively. It's clear you haven't even tried it. Take a deep breath. Pick and editor and try and use it for a week.

I know that these buttons work too. But this is not a convenient way of using Emacs.

You said:

> I would like to use "page-down" instead.

So just use page-down. What's the problem? Why isn't it convenient?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#20

Post by eliah-lakhin »

ctb_mg wrote: post #16

You should know that most people would probably consider vim as sufficiently "modern" -- it is actively maintained and still useful for many. 'vi' is the old school predecessor... I believe vim has an "easy mode" which allows it to work as a more traditional non-modal text editor. You may want to give this a shot and then slowly ease yourself into the key chords.

I didn't say that "vim" is not modern. And I know that many people find it useful. Moreover I use it myself quite often since it is my default console editor. But I found it not so useful for myself as a primary editor. There are reasons that I prefered to skip in the root message to avoid starting of flame war.

But I'm wondering why people keep teach me and advice me how to use vim and emacs? I didn't ask any advices on these two editors. I just asked about alternatives. Maybe not so famous alternatives, but anyway.

I respect your feelings on your favourite editor. And I don't claim you to change your mind about it, nor I want to change mine. I just asked about alternative products.

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