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Emacs 26.2 Released

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Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#111

Post by antipaul »

young_unixer wrote: post #68
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.

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.

I use defaults, even default control key*

*I use a macbook pro, and my thumb is used to hitting CMD-X, CMD-C, CMD-V, s what has happened is that I hit control with my thumb instead of pinky - I curl the thumb in and below my palm.

But I still love default keybindings, and what is lovely, is that many of the navigation keys are system wide on MacOS: ctrl-a, ctrl-e, etc.

Then CMD-C and CMD-V actually also work on emacs, so I sometimes use those too (I use https://emacsformacosx.com)

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#112

Post by emacsvimlover »

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.

Can you give the n00b's any tips on how to master emacs while keeping it interesting?

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#113

Post by kstrauser »

8456523 wrote: post #93
kstrauser wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If MS ever loses the plot and ruins VS Code, I'll probably switch to some fork of VS Code along with millions of other people.

Most likely I would, too, as long as they don't go Oracle on it.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#114

Post by mrspeaker »

TypingStuff wrote: post #108
mrspeaker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only just understood Emacs about a year ago, despite being a nerd for at least 30 years. I like to think I don't have too many regrets in life - but I'm kicking myself for not realizing what Emacs was way back then - or at any of the times I've tried it out in the past (writing it off as "a text editor")! Never too late though, and on the plus side I've now got decades of hidden Emacs goodies still to discover!

+1. I recall thinking it was a text editor with inferior key bindings to vim, and with a bunch of unnecessary weirdness. I'm glad I took the time to investigate this discoverable interactive programmatic keyboard-oriented UI platform, that also happens to have a great editor (evil). A uniquely empowering tool for programmers.

I've gone all in, I'm in for life. Emacs has already deprecated at least a dozen apps, web apps, and websites I used to frequent. I'm starting to despise any other software...

...so when does someone teach me the secret handshake?

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#115

Post by kstrauser »

jkdufair wrote: post #101
kstrauser wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Emacs has multiple cursors: https://github.com/magnars/multiple-cursors.el I used VSCode for a few years, but never found a way to work with code in semantic units vs. as text. And I like that no matter what language I'm working in, the experience is the same. VSCode plugin editors may or may not (read: wouldn't have) agreed on a set of conventions for working with code independent of the programming language.

I tried that, but it never worked as well for me as it did in Sublime Text, or more recently VS Code.

I get what you mean about Emacs's nearly universal code conventions, but that's an example of something I personally found to be more useful in theory than in practice. While I love the concept, 95% of the time I'm hacking around in Python. The rest of the time is a hodge-podge of shell scripts and the rare C snippet. Maybe a little SQL now and then, or perhaps some JavaScript. When I'm working in something that isn't my usual, I find myself spending much more time reading code than writing it, and in that context I don't get as much benefit from those conventions.

Of course this is all incredibly subjective. If you get a lot of benefit from that, awesome! I can definitely see the appeal. I just don't feel like it makes a whole lot of difference for me.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#116

Post by jes »

emacsvimlover wrote: post #112
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.

Can you give the n00b's any tips on how to master emacs while keeping it interesting?

For me it's been helpful to sometimes take some time, look at the key bindings for a particular mode, and practice them. With some periodic investment in committing them to memory, I think your Emacs productivity will improve.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#117

Post by jes »

young_unixer wrote: post #68
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.

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.

I have not had any RSI issues.

I have seen a video about someone who hacked up a means to use Emacs via voice control. I may play with something like that myself. I doubt that using Emacs via a keyboard is really my bottleneck, though. So any hacks in that direction may be just for fun.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#118

Post by heartofgold »

emacsvimlover wrote: post #112
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.

Can you give the n00b's any tips on how to master emacs while keeping it interesting?

For me personally: - I started out just learning navigation. How to move around within buffers, how to open multiple buffers and move around between buffers.

Then I learned several built in commands.

Years later I learned clojure, a lisp dialect. After learning it, and then looking back at emacs lisp (elisp), and a light bulb went on for me. You can write any elisp function you want, which has functions to manipulate text within buffers and much more. Using it you can create any kind of specialized editor function you can dream of, and you can call that function with "M-x function-name". If use use the function lots, then you can bind that function to a keystroke. (For example, if you wanted a completely custom function... to delete the current block of code, you could write an elisp function to go to move the point to the blocks beginning brace, set the mark, move to the matching brace, and then delete the region.)

There are several "modes" that define how buffers behave. A clojure mode will know how to highlight code and navigate around parenthesis. Magit-mode knows all kinds of commands for operating a git project, and org-mode knows commands to help facilitate note-taking.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#119

Post by pnw_hazor »

black-tea wrote: post #57
pnw_hazor wrote: post #43

I had been away from emacs for almost 10 years since I stopped being a pro programmer. And even back then I wasn't really an emacs power-user. I just knew enough to be productive and slightly dangerous. Recently, I reached my last nerve with MS Word and buckled down to ditch Word for emacs. Today I do just about all my writing in emacs (markdown) and then generate word docx using pandoc at the end. Now, I use emacs a…

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 note taking and some task tracking. My main doc writing setup is more like an ide setup.

markdowndocx with pandoc lets me use a ref-doc.docx file that ensures all the styling I need for legal docs gets into the word doc. So you make a markdown file from the ref-doc.docx then edit the markdown file and convert to docx using the same ref-doc and everything in docx has the correct style, and stuff like line numbers and headers are preserved. Pretty sweet.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#120

Post by jes »

emacsvimlover wrote: post #110
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.

Kudos to you. I have tried and failed miserably to learn emacs many times. The switch from vi seems to be really hard but I really like emacs and hope to become a pro user someday.

I wish you productivity with whatever tool you find works best for you.
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