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Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

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Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#81

Post by quanticle »

egypturnash wrote: post #80
egypturnash wrote: post #67

“I don’t care what editor you use for source code – you can use Quick basic for all I care – but look, you have to know that Magit exists. Even if you don’t use Emacs in any other capacity, you may want to use it for Magit.” There are exactly two instances of “Magit” in this web page and I just quoted both of them.

A quick web search brings me to Magit’s page, which tells me that Magit is “A Git Porcelain inside Emacs” which just creates further questions. How does one make delicate pottery out of a version control system? In what circles is “a porcelain” a synonym for “user interface”?

As far as I can tell, it's only in git circles. Git refers to its command line interface as "porcelain" to distinguish it from the "plumbing" that is the .git folder.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#82

Post by dmortin »

module0000 wrote: post #53

Logging into "work" systems and typing "emacs" == "command not found". Typing "vi" opens a useful editor. It's not that I hate emacs or have some aversion to anything except vi/vim. The problem is that vi is everywhere , and by mastering the always-available editor, I always have my tools at hand. On foreign systems, or highly regulated systems that I can't add software to, this is a huge advantage.

As the sibling comment says you should try editing remote files with the editor running on your computer. Tramp provides this transparently for Emacs. You don't have to manually log in to edit remote files.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#83

Post by quanticle »

xenophonf wrote: post #32
aldanor wrote: post #13

Being a vim guy myself, I only use Emacs (Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those a-x a-y a-z a-m-s-x type shortcuts and replace them with something ergonomic) as a git client - because Magit is the best git client out there. I’ve tried using Spacemacs as a main editor for a while, but it’s too much of a mess, and if anything goes wrong (and it often does) you’re stuck with obscure lisp tracebacks, th…

if anything goes wrong (and it often does) you’re stuck with obscure lisp tracebacks Is Spacemacs really that broken? I use the same GNU Emacs configuration across Windows, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, CentOS, and macOS, along with packages like tramp, magit, slime, and python-mode, and the worst thing that's happened in recent memory is that either jinja2-mode or salt-mode (I forget which) doesn't indent things the way I like.

Spacemacs is that broken. The problem is that Spacemacs tries to impose its own shortcuts onto other emacs packages that may or may not know about spacemacs. For modes that perform extensive customization of their own, spacemacs alterations to emacs can result in some very weird behavior. For example, markdown-mode's highlighting, will, for mysterious reasons break when used with spacemacs [1].

The other problem with spacemacs is that if you're trying to use another emacs package, now you have to look up two sets of documentation. You have to look up the package's documentation to find the command that you want to execute, and then you have to look up the documentation for the relevant spacemacs layer to figure out what spacemacs has remapped the command to.

I tried to use spacemacs as a transition path from vim to emacs, but I found that I had much more success by just "ripping off the bandaid", remapping caps-lock to ctrl and spending a weekend forcing myself to relearn how to perform my most commonly used vim commands in emacs.

[1]: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/issues/11790

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#84

Post by gknoy »

egypturnash wrote: post #80
egypturnash wrote: post #67

“I don’t care what editor you use for source code – you can use Quick basic for all I care – but look, you have to know that Magit exists. Even if you don’t use Emacs in any other capacity, you may want to use it for Magit.” There are exactly two instances of “Magit” in this web page and I just quoted both of them.

A quick web search brings me to Magit’s page, which tells me that Magit is “A Git Porcelain inside Emacs” which just creates further questions. How does one make delicate pottery out of a version control system? In what circles is “a porcelain” a synonym for “user interface”?

The Git documentation refers to everything Nicely Shaped that is tacked on to the core git functionality as "porcelain" [0]. (Pretty much everything that we normally use when interacting with git counts as porcelain.)

0: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Plumbing-and-Po...

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#85

Post by fao_ »

didibus wrote: post #5
tasubotadas wrote: post #4

I remember giving Emacs a serious go 5 years ago. I really wanted to like it but the archaic mode switches[1] were just too much when you are used to the convenience of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (I'll call these "modern shortcuts"). I've tried using ErgoEmacs[2] but what I've learned was that it doesn't really play nicely with all the other extensions. It's a shame because I've wanted to find something a bit more powerful th…

You can use CUA mode: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CuaMode I also highly recommend Spacemacs. If VI isn't your thing, it is still great to use it, just set it up in Holy mode using Ivy. What it adds (on top of a great default config), is bindings which start with M-m (that's Alt+m). For almost everything. Like saving your file is M-m f s (that's Alt+m release, f release, s release).

Sure, but with a leader key in vim set to 'f', I can save with f-s (that is, press the f key and then the s key), which after a month is next to automatic

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#86

Post by michaelmrose »

pera wrote: post #64
michaelmrose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I like to bind virtually everything to a sequence of keys starting with a leader key instead of control this alt that coltrol the other thing. Hydras further provide an attractive discoverable menu to remind you of what options are available. Major mode hydra let's you define a hydra per mode and pops up the correct one based on the mode you are in. https://github.com/jerrypnz/major-mode-hydra.el/blob/mast…

Abo-abo's Emacs packages are truly fantastic. One that I personally love is Ivy-mode (with Counsel and Swiper): https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper

He is the shit. I have several times independently discovered something nice to discover it was yet another contribution.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#87

Post by ashtonbaker »

JohnStrangeII wrote: post #20

I'm using Emacs for my daily tasks, both writing and programming. One question I have to more experienced Emacs users: Can you recommend an email client? It needs to be able to display html mails. Currently, I use claws-mail and am fairly happy with it, except for the search. I've got about 30,000 mails in the inbox and full-text searching them takes too long. Is there a way to transition my claws-mail folders to Ema…

I didn't really understand org-mode for a long time either - my problem was that I would read tutorials which gave very detailed descriptions about the various theoretical abilities of org-mode, which are like tools, but left up to the reader the task of determining an overall "goal" or workflow to be accomplished using these tools. So I ended up just working in a single org-mode file, not really understanding which tools I might like to use, how I could use it as an organizational system.

For me, the lightbulb moment came from a couple of blog posts called "Building a Second Brain in Emacs and Org-Mode" [0][1], which outlined an actual workflow (based on Getting Things Done or GTD [1]) and explained how org-mode enhanced it. If you follow along, you may find it helpful to see the author's actual emacs configuration (especially the parts that relate to org-mode) [3], the templates he uses to create projects and e.g. weekly reviews [4], and a talk he gave at an Emacs meetup about his workflow. It could be a little more organized in a single place, but this is the best "tutorial" I've ever found about org-mode.

After implementing this myself, I've found that I use certain parts of it a lot, and other parts not at all. I also found that I prefer to periodically refile org-mode notes into a "knowledge repository" (a series of text files in my org-mode directory), rather than in evernote as suggested, and that this is best managed/browsed (for me) using Deft [6] rather than org-mode itself. So I've also managed to extend the system for my preferences a bit.

Sorry for the brain dump - hopefully this answers your question a bit.

[0] https://praxis.fortelabs.co/building-a-second-brain-in-emacs...

[1] https://medium.com/@tasshin/implementing-a-second-brain-in-e...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

[3] https://github.com/mwfogleman/.emacs.d

[4] https://gist.github.com/mwfoglemanhttps://github.com/mwfogle...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpmkeh4D98s

[6] https://github.com/jrblevin/deft

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#88

Post by jjtheblunt »

aldanor wrote: post #13

Being a vim guy myself, I only use Emacs (Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those a-x a-y a-z a-m-s-x type shortcuts and replace them with something ergonomic) as a git client - because Magit is the best git client out there. I’ve tried using Spacemacs as a main editor for a while, but it’s too much of a mess, and if anything goes wrong (and it often does) you’re stuck with obscure lisp tracebacks, th…

kak ?

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#90

Post by yarrel »

aldanor wrote: post #13

Being a vim guy myself, I only use Emacs (Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those a-x a-y a-z a-m-s-x type shortcuts and replace them with something ergonomic) as a git client - because Magit is the best git client out there. I’ve tried using Spacemacs as a main editor for a while, but it’s too much of a mess, and if anything goes wrong (and it often does) you’re stuck with obscure lisp tracebacks, th…

If Spacemacs is broken, not using Spacemacs sounds like a good solution. Juse Emacs' standard keybindings, they're easy enough to learn.
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