On vim vs emacs

#1

Post by b-man » Mon, May 24, 2010, 3:59 PM UTC

On vim vs emacs
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Re: On vim vs emacs

#2

Post by j_baker » Mon, May 24, 2010, 4:18 PM UTC

I like using vim in emacs, but it makes it too easy for me to fall back to my emacs muscle memory.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#3

Post by naner » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:12 PM UTC

Heh, I've ended up doing the same thing. The issue is that Vim's key scheme has a much better economy of motion (faster with less movement) while Emacs is much more extensible and flexible. So this is the compromise instead of creating yet another text editor.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#4

Post by kennu » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:14 PM UTC

Vim is cool because it's built in to every OS (except maybe Windows) and highly usable even without any configuration and requires very little resources.

For me knowing vim has proven a very productive skill. I often work on random new OS installations like virtual machines and cloud instances, and sometimes in very limited environments like embedded Linux devices. It works there just as well as in my regular Mac/Linux environments.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#5

Post by jroes » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:28 PM UTC

I used to do the same thing, but I missed out on a lot of good emacs shortcuts. Today I use the dvorak version of Xah Lee's layout. You get vim-like navigation by holding Meta.

http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html

Re: On vim vs emacs

#6

Post by SlyShy » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:30 PM UTC

Somewhat specious, since Emacs can be run inside Vim too.

This is a screenshot of Vim in Emacs in Vim: http://i.imgur.com/fxlm4.jpg

Re: On vim vs emacs

#7

Post by Xurinos » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:32 PM UTC

I hear about the viper-mode and vimpulse stuff a lot, and while they go a long way towards helping emacs be more useful for text editing, I find the discontinuities disturbing.

For example, I am no longer in vi-mode if I end up in a help window of some sort. I cannot just Ctrl-W+Ctrl-W my way back to the original window; that suddenly deletes words. But I like working with multiple windows in vim sometimes. This gets frustrating for a vim user.

Also, macros are still not fixed, still using the emacs assumption of what people want for an enhanced vi. We want the easy qq and @q.

Definitely, if you are going to try it out, grab vimpulse. viper-mode is a joke to the developers coming from the vim world. vimpulse makes visual mode highlighting sensible.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#8

Post by xtho » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:33 PM UTC

BTW, vim is the perfect editor for tablets and similar devices with a shrunken keyboard.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#9

Post by tumult » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:46 PM UTC

Xurinos wrote: post #7

I hear about the viper-mode and vimpulse stuff a lot, and while they go a long way towards helping emacs be more useful for text editing, I find the discontinuities disturbing. For example, I am no longer in vi-mode if I end up in a help window of some sort. I cannot just Ctrl-W+Ctrl-W my way back to the original window; that suddenly deletes words. But I like working with multiple windows in vim sometimes. This gets…

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/viper-in-more-modes.el

Re: On vim vs emacs

#10

Post by BoppreH » Mon, May 24, 2010, 5:52 PM UTC

I hear a lot about this vim vs emacs war. But I have never seen a battle, so to speak.

Where can I see videos of people actually using this text editors? A side by side comparison of interesting/useful features?

I really would like to choose, but the most I managed to find was a guy playing snake on his emacs.

I'm currently using the very basics features of vim, but just because I felt like it and it came with a tutor file.