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Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

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Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#251

Post by dmitriid »

xte wrote: post #247
dmitriid wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found simple setup effective > my config is now ~4000 lines We have critical production services which are a magnitude of lines fewer than your "simple config". There's a reason I linked my own init.el: I'm not talking about something I have no idea about. It's quite short and quite extensively documented. And even there you see: somethign is set as global vars, something is buffer local args, something is inited…

That's why I use org-mode for my config so I can set :tangle no anytime, with {use,req}-pacakge I can handle the complexity without feeling it. Actually I live (in IT terms) in Emacs, from the WM (EXWM(-x)) to MUA (notmuch-emacs) to personal finance (ledger-mode) to document system (skeletor+org+LaTeX+yasnippet) to programming environment (personal use of guile (geiser), hy, python (jedi etc), nim and various shells/…

My complaint: emacs requires a lot of configuration that is often arcane or poorly documented.

You: but it's so simple! I only use notmuch-emacs, and ledger-mode, and skeletor+org+LaTeX+yasnippet, and geiser, and jedi, and tramp+eshell, and dired with tons of related addons, and..., and..., and..., and...

Something tells me you just reinforce the point I'm making. I personally have a life outside of looking for and configuring dozens of emacs packages in a hundred different ways.

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#252

Post by lispm »

dan-robertson wrote: post #224
gglitch wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is a joke, but there seem to be a lot of people who are really attached to the interpretation of Emacs as a little Lisp Machine.

Emacs is an ok lisp machine. It is much better than many common lisp distributions which are typically not very good lisp machines (I believe the proprietary systems are better in this regard). Clinging on to Emacs as a lisp machine can mean clinging onto the more dynamic customisable extensible computation environment epitomised by the lisp machine, and in this sense I think it is more understandable

> Emacs is an ok lisp machine

GNU Emacs is an extensible text editor, but not a Lisp Machine. A Lisp machine is a computer with a Lisp OS on the metal. This means the OS itself is written in Lisp and not just some specialized application, interfacing to a foreign underlying OS. A Lisp OS has also an open GUI and not just an editor-buffer-based UI.

With GNU Emacs the extensibility ends when one calls an OS tool or an OS library - for a Lisp Machine there is no such distinction.

GNU Emacs is a mostly single-threaded editor, with a horrible user interface and heroic efforts from users to deal with thousands of modes and keystroke combinations.

None of the extensible Lisp applications are 'Lisp Machines': not Autocad, not Audacity, not iCAD, not Creo Elements, not GNU Emacs, not OpusModus, not Macsyma, ... They are Lisp applications which expose a development interface and a development environment (yes, Autocad has Lisp development tools) and users are writing complex applications on top of those.

On a real Lisp Machine, an Emacs-like text editor is just one application and one interface style.

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#253

Post by kashyapc »

Torwald wrote: post #225
kashyapc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sole use of Emacs is for Org-Mode (for extensive note-taking, task breakdown, writing reports, etc). I'm glad I invested the time three years ago. During the upcoming holidays, I should try to explore and "stumble upon" advanced features and neat tricks that I haven't come across yet.

Remember mode could be cool for your use case. It may be integrated into Org by now (?)

Thanks for the suggestion; never heard of it before. Not sure if it's integrated into Org itself; it looks like so. but the Remember Mode seems to have Org as one of its "backends"[1]. Reading the documentation ... section 7.5 (Saving to an Org Mode file) says:

"For instructions on how to integrate Remember with Org Mode, consult Capture"

Okay, let's go and read the documentation of Capture[2]; it says:

"Capture lets you quickly store notes with little interruption of your work flow. Org's method for capturing new items is heavily inspired by John Wiegley excellent remember.el package. Up to version 6.36, Org used a special setup for remember.el, then replaced it with org-remember.el. As of version 8.0, org-remember.el has been completely replaced by org-capture.el."

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/remember...

[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/org.html...

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#254

Post by Torwald »

macintux wrote: post #231
Torwald wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which was the last Apple model with the Ctrl-key at the correct location?

From skimming the Wikipedia article, looks like an optional keyboard from the Mac II/SE days was the end of that era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#Apple_Keyboard_...

Thanks. I remember having to use a third party util to do that on earlier Mac OS X machines, but with the newer Macs you can just switch config by standard system prefs.

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#255

Post by badpun »

xte wrote: post #247
dmitriid wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found simple setup effective > my config is now ~4000 lines We have critical production services which are a magnitude of lines fewer than your "simple config". There's a reason I linked my own init.el: I'm not talking about something I have no idea about. It's quite short and quite extensively documented. And even there you see: somethign is set as global vars, something is buffer local args, something is inited…

That's why I use org-mode for my config so I can set :tangle no anytime, with {use,req}-pacakge I can handle the complexity without feeling it. Actually I live (in IT terms) in Emacs, from the WM (EXWM(-x)) to MUA (notmuch-emacs) to personal finance (ledger-mode) to document system (skeletor+org+LaTeX+yasnippet) to programming environment (personal use of guile (geiser), hy, python (jedi etc), nim and various shells/…

> Actually I live (in IT terms) in Emacs

I never quite got that. What is the advantage of doing everything on your PC with Emacs plugins, instead of using dedicated programs for specific tasks? I get that the text editor for all these tasks is behaving the same way when going the Emacs way - is that the only advantage though?

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#256

Post by jacobherrington »

brlewis wrote: post #54
jacobherrington wrote: post #31

About four months ago I moved from VS Code to Spacemacs and it has been an extremely rewarding experience. Anyone who is afraid of Emacs or Vim should give it a try. I've heard good things about Doom and Prelude as well.

Did you have previous experience with emacs? I'm a long-time emacs user, but have been assuming it's better to introduce new people to VS Code since it's more mainstream.

I did not have any experience with emacs and only the most basic knowledge of Vim. I had some guidance from my company's CTO though.

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#257

Post by jacobherrington »

fbnlsr wrote: post #36
jacobherrington wrote: post #31

About four months ago I moved from VS Code to Spacemacs and it has been an extremely rewarding experience. Anyone who is afraid of Emacs or Vim should give it a try. I've heard good things about Doom and Prelude as well.

Could you give us a few pointer on how you prefer working with Spacemacs rather than with VS Code? I've tried Vim a few times but got turned off by the slow process of learning the multiple keyboard shortcuts to do a simple task.

Give Spacemacs a shot. Here is why it's an easier transition than VS Code to vanilla emacs or Vim:

- It's already 99% configured

- The keyboard shortcuts are mnemonic

- There is a UI display of all the shortcuts within one keystroke at any given time

- You can still function with your mouse -- if you need to

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#259

Post by Tcepsa »

kqr wrote: post #218
na85 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever managed to get intellisense working for c#? I try every few months with junk like Roslyn but it never seems to work. It just silently fails to do anything at all.

That was tricky to get working well, and for a while I hobbled along with gtags... but I do have it working now. And it wasn't that complicated, I was just missing an embarrassing piece of the puzzle. But yes, basically (require 'csharp-mode) (require 'omnisharp) (setq omnisharp-expected-server-version "1.32.8") (add-hook 'csharp-mode-hook 'omnisharp-mode t) Then omnisharp should be able to install and start a Roslyn…

One additional thing I've found that I needed (in Windows) is

    (setq omnisharp-server-executable-path "C:\\path\\to\\OmniSharp.exe")
So it can actually start the OmniSharp server (EDIT: Possibly because I haven't installed OmniSharp so much as just unzip it)

Re: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

#260

Post by arambhashura »

sn41 wrote: post #33

There is a strange editing mode that I stumbled on by myself, which I can do in Emacs. Suppose I am editing a huge file, and need to make change in some other part without necessarily forgetting where I am. I just open a new buffer for the same file, edit the desired area, and close the new buffer. I have the old position restored automatically in the old buffer. Of course, this can be done to arbitrary number of lev…

Then you may find the "narrow-to-region" command useful too. It allows you to select a region of text, and make everything else in the buffer invisible and unmodifiable.

I find it useful when trying to grok a specific function without getting distracted, or more usefully, doing a search-and-replace without fear of doing a replace in an unintended part of the buffer.

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