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Emacs 26.2 Released

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Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#81

Post by Y_Y »

andrenth wrote: post #53
tcoff91 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spacemacs! I was a long-time vim+tmux diehard and now i'm all about spacemacs. Org-mode and Magit are just too good to live without. There were a few hurdles when switching, mainly around auto-indent differences that were harder to configure with emacs. (dtrt-indent ftw, thank god for that). Also the regexes are different and not as good (i don't think emacs regexes do negative lookahead etc...) so some of the advanc…

Are you using evil mode? It seems to be suggested by the spacemacs docs.

Almost certainly. The "point" is that vim has the better controls and emacs has better everything else.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#82

Post by mercer »

ddavis wrote: post #29
jes wrote: post #8

I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.

I'm just under half your age and I hope to be using Emacs when I'm 59 1/2! I'm also grateful to everyone who has made Emacs as great as it is.

Same here. For me it's org-mode that made me commit to it, but I might end up using it for many other things eventually (git, coding, etc.).

I'm mostly okay with code editors coming and going, but the one constant in my life has been project/task management, journalling, and personal information management in the broadest sense.

I just got tired of my tools either turning to shit, being deprecated, or not quite doing what I need them to do. Org Mode has been exactly what I've been looking for, and once I started using it seriously it became the thing I didn't know I wanted.

It's really comforting to me to know that I'll probably be able to use the same tool for the rest of my life, and that I can (and often already do) use it for many other things (Tramp, magit, coding in general).

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#83

Post by 8456523 »

rainygold wrote: post #66
8456523 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 58 2/3, and GNU Emacs has been my daily driver since 1991. vscode however will probably take over that role some time during the next 12 months.

Why vscode?

My visual acuity varies, so I benefit a lot from software that lets me change the size of the elements on the screen. The typical Mac app allows the user to change the size of the text in the main pane, but everything else is a fixed size. In contrast, all the Electron apps I've tested give the user an easy way to change the size of everything, e.g., all the icons in all the panes.

If I had found a way to change the size of everything on one of the Lua-based editors on the Mac, I probably would've switched years ago to one them. (I don't recall their names.)

If I stay with Emacs it will be because learning how to modify vscode, e.g., by writing my own extension, proved too difficult. (I want my editor to be a general interface to information that is easy for me to modify by writing code.)

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#84

Post by snazz »

bloopernova wrote: post #69
black-tea wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing markdown with emacs is a huge step up. Now you get to take another big step up when you use org-mode instead of markdown. I'm actually pretty envious.

I use org-mode for todo items, but haven't been using emacs for long. What does org-mode do with writing documents that is better than Markdown?

For one example that I like to cite, install Org-Babel and play around with a Jupyter-notebook-esque interface within your document. When you’re done, GitHub will render it statically like they do Markdown.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#85

Post by coliveira »

tcoff91 wrote: post #34
coliveira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that someone that has used vim for more than 20 years will never feel truly comfortable with emacs. I say this having started with emacs for a few years, and since switched to vim, now for almost 20 years.

What about evil mode? Also spacemacs has evil bindings for all of its emacs packages.

Vi(m) is not just a set of key bindings. It is also a philosophy of text editing that is much more integrated with the command line. You cannot replicate it entirely in other editors.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#86

Post by confounded »

bbbobbb wrote: post #48

I wish I spent time learning how to use Emacs in the past to a degree where customizing my installation was faster than learning something else. As I stand now, it seems really hard to justify to invest time into it when the benefits over using something very easy to work with (like JetBrains IDEs for Java or VS Code for Python) sound marginal. I know experts can fly around in it and it looks amazing. Having a single…

The thing you use daily will always be the most familiar. I’ve gone from your position, to the opposite; now the switching-costs of moving away from Emacs to an IDE put me off.

There do have to be real benefits to make it work. For me it was some very specific things I wanted to do for data analysis that weren’t possible in an IDE at the time, and the other benefits (org-mode, tramp etc.) just sort of compounded.

It’s certainly been a process though. And I wouldn’t have got here if I didn’t find fiddling with editors an enjoyable thing to do, while waiting for a database-query/drinking-buddy-to-leave-work/partner’s-Netflix-binge-to-conclude etc.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#87

Post by mruts »

cgdub wrote: post #74
mruts wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spacemacs is for vim users. No one who doesn’t use evil mode uses it. Also most people who use evil-mode probably use spacemacs. Emacs keybindings are burned into my brain at this point, but if I had to do it again, I would probably go with spacemacs. I think modal editing is probably superior.

I don't use evil-mode (anymore), but I still use Spacemacs. I'm too lazy to configure everything myself (language modes, Helm, Projectile, Magit, etc) so I use Spacemacs as a starting point and load a bunch of extra ELisp on top. I'd recommend Spacemacs (even if you're not using evil) if you're new to Emacs and want to see how different and powerful a fully customized Emacs is when compared to the bare-bones experien…

I’ve never used it, but I use prelude. Is spacemacs better?

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#88

Post by kstrauser »

snazz wrote: post #78
rainygold wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why vscode?

I’ve seen this pop up a lot lately—someone who’s been using Emacs or Vim for years and then sees the “new cool” editor and says they’ll be switching to it. I have the same question, since someone who’s used Emacs for that long would surely have “seen the light” already. Maybe they’re yak shaving with the config instead of getting work done? That’s one of the few valid complaints I can think of.

I used Emacs for a couple of decades but switched over to VS Code after a couple of days of playing with it. I love Emacs and the concept of infinite configurability. But as it turns out, I don't actually use most of that flexibility. It's more common that I'll install a package, tweak a couple of knobs, and get on with work.

Well, VS Code offers the equivalents of all the Emacs packages that I actually use, and they come with sane defaults. Once I've tweaked the Python module a little bit, I tend to ignore its other options and get back to editing code. And in that code editing environment, I honestly prefer VS Code. The key bindings feel like other modern apps (yay for using the same Mac shortcuts for moving around that every thing else uses). Menus (and their shortcuts) work as expected. I don't have Emacs's beautiful macros, but I do have multi-cursor editing which is beautiful in a different way. It's fast. It looks pretty, with nice easier-to-install themes and icon packages. Basically, VS Code does everything that I ask of Emacs, but in a modern package.

I still love Emacs. I had switched to Sublime Text at one point but came back to the 'Macs because ST wasn't good enough to win me over permanently. And I definitely still love the idea that I can rewrite all of Emacs to make it my own personal slice of editing heaven that is optimized for me and me alone. That's wonderful! But now that there's an excellent, MIT-licensed, well supported alternative that doesn't everything that I want in practice, I'm sold.

But if MS ever loses the plot and ruins VS Code, I'll be back on Emacs in a heartbeat.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#89

Post by adw »

jimbokun wrote: post #73
young_unixer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you had RSI issues? Do you use it with the default keybindings? I've tried it a few times but the default keybindings seem unnatural to me. Not that it's Emacs fault, considering the keyboards they used back then.

Step one: remap Caps Lock to Control.

It's all about knowing the best places for modifier keys; Control next to A, Caps Lock encased in concrete at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#90

Post by RHSeeger »

laughingman2 wrote: post #11
egh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/egh/emacs-totd or https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay Could be modified to show, e.g. dired commands as well.

lol! Not at all surprised, if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it.

https://xkcd.com/378/
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