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Emacs 26.2 Released

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Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#161
post #140

> - In Dired, the 'Z' command on a directory name compresses all of its files. Dired is so handy, but it does so much. Unless I were to use this feature often enough I fear I would never remember it was there and just break out to a terminal and `tar -zcf` manually. I feel like something already exists for this, but it would be cool if there was a "Random Mode Tip of The Day" that one could invoke for discovery and p…

Use menus. The menus are really handy for discovery. Many I see disable them (the menu-bar-mode), but it doesn't take up more than about a line, and I go to it to discover what interesting bits a mode has or to find some functionality I use less often and forgot the keybinding to it. I do also use which-key-mode, and there is always M-x apropos & the completion, but menu is a nice companion to these stuff.

I'm one who turns them off. When disabled, you can just hit C-down-mouse-3 (i.e., ctrl-right click) anywhere in a buffer to get the global menu in the form of a pop-up. That works well enough for me for the rare occasions when I want to go spelunking through the menu (mostly to find some obscure Calc op).

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#162

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.

I got painful wrists and hands when using Emacs intensively for coding. Viper mode helped but then I transitioned from development to sysadmin and did far less coding. So switched to vi because it was everywhere when Emacs wasn't.[0] Now that Emacs is everywhere, I'm looking to going back and using evil-mode. We'll see how it goes. I find the customisation on Emacs far less hacky than vim. [0] I used to grab tapes(!)…

For some sysadmin type things, one can use tramp to edit files/open shells on remote machines. One trick is that sshx often works better than ssh. On the other hand it doesn’t work completely flawlessly and can be slightly painful, more so in the transition between using separate terminals and ssh and vi, and using emacs with other things in separate buffers.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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?

Mind sharing your config? :)

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#164
post #155
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that’s because IIRC, there’s no official support for Emacs to display native windows in Cocoa, and Emacs is simply using macOS’ X11 compatibility system. If you could fix that behavior so that Emacs behaves more like a native Cocoa application, I see no reason that the Emacs maintainers should reject a patch. Emacs has, as far as I can tell, always strived to use as much of a native system’s interface a…

It does the same thing on Windows. This just appears to be how Emacs behaves.

Huh. That does suggest that my initial assumption about Emacs adapting to its environment was incorrect.

I do know that Emacs did adapt a lot when coming to Unix/X11 from its initial roots on other systems, but maybe it has ossified since then.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#165

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.

I learned Emacs[0] on a Symbolics "space cadet" keyboard which has all the modifier keys in the lower left corner. Maybe that's why I've never felt any need to move the control key from its lower left location on my Mac keyboard.

[0] Technically Zmacs, but most of the key bindings were the same.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#166
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs's Mac (graphical) interface does that, too, which is not conforming to the environment it is running in. And there is no user option for changing it to a contextual menu containing Cut, Copy, Paste, etc. (I changed it for myself by writing about 100 lines of Emacs Lisp.)

I would guess that’s because IIRC, there’s no official support for Emacs to display native windows in Cocoa, and Emacs is simply using macOS’ X11 compatibility system. If you could fix that behavior so that Emacs behaves more like a native Cocoa application, I see no reason that the Emacs maintainers should reject a patch. Emacs has, as far as I can tell, always strived to use as much of a native system’s interface a…

The official Emacs release for OSX uses Cocoa.

For more info see the first answer here: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/28840/os-x-emacs-d...

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#167
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.

For a long time I was unaffected, until I started using emacs more. This was resolved by switching to an ergonomic keyboard where I put all the modifier keys on the thumbs which resolved this issue (but made single handed typing of eg C-V or single words a bit annoying)

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#168
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any suggestions to pick it up without wanting to give up due to convoluted shortcuts?

If you're already familiar with vim, I've heard good things about Spacemacs: http://spacemacs.org/

I'm not really crazy about Spacemacs because there's so much happening and I like to slowly build my config over time so I know what each piece does, so I can quickly make changes if there's something causing friction.

A nice happy medium is Prelude -- https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

It's big, but probably not too big to understand and jump in and tweak.

I still prefer my own hand-rolled config though.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#169
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I would then assume that Emacs has rudimentary rendering support in Cocoa, but is otherwise treating it as a variant of X11, and not the fully different graphical system it presumably is. Emacs still has no full-fledged Cocoa integration. That is still only available in the Aquamacs fork, as far as I know: http://aquamacs.org/

You've never used Emacs with Cocoa or looked at any source code integrating Emacs with Cocoa; have you?

This is true. I hope I did not give a contrary impression? I was, somewhat briefly, aware of some of the complexities of Emacs running under NeXTSTEP (not the text-only Emacs 18 included with NeXTSTEP, but proper Emacs 19 with NeXTSTEP windowing support), but that was (obviously) many years ago, and I don’t claim to remember any of it. And I was certainly not involved in implementing any of it.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#170
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am excited for you but that "journey of discovery" is way, way too addictive for me. I find myself chasing edge case requirements in my config rather than getting work done. To each thier own, of course! I still use Emacs when I ssh into my vps and, if I want primarily on Windows doing dev if Visual Studio, would likely use it for everything (as I did back when I was primarily on UNIX systems). Just writing this ma…

I setup the VS Emacs bindings and then always bind C-X C-E to open current file/line in Emacs from VS. With that I get along pretty well combining VS and Emacs.

Are you using one of the VS Emacs bindings available in the library or a custom one? I've found all of the most popular ones to not be good enough to use VS like Emacs in Windows.
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