Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#91

Post by dmortin » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #30

rout39574 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have many things going at the same time, and select between them using the buffer menu. I find the devotion of yet another chunk of screen real estate to the tab list rather a waste, but shrug aesthetics. C-x C-b shows you the list of tabs ("buffers") and lets you select from them easily. As a bonus, the title portion isn't compressed to incomprehensibility when they get numerous.

I use tabs to switch between window configurations. Say I code in Python, with docs and shell windows on the right. Then I want to quickly take a look at git history. But, if I start magit, it will hijack the window configuration and my carefully placed/resized windows will get messy. So, I open a new tab and start magit there. Now, I can switch between the two tabs - ie. window/buffer layouts - with a single key. Th…

> To each their own of course, just saying there are good uses for tabs in Emacs, unless you want to delegate this to your WM

You mention window configurations, and you say " it's much less hassle with tabs." You can assign a single key to switch between window configurations too and then it's practically the same, isn't it?

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#92

Post by yarrel » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

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.

Yes vi is there on systems where you don't have Emacs. Vi is simple enough to remember the commands you need if this ever happens, and this is not really a reason to eschew something more powerful everywhere else.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#93

Post by throw0101a » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

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…

* Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those

Are you aware of Emacs with evil mode (i.e., Extensible VI Layer)?

* https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#94

Post by dmitriid » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #49

dmitriid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the serious obstacle that vanilla emacs is not that powerful at all. The article lists over 20 extensions you need to install to "feel the power". And every emacs user will have their own set of extensions, carefully curated. Everyone ends up with rather huge init.el setups with increasingly bizarre and arcane settings. After over two years of using emacs and a 437-line init.el[1] of my own I gave up when one d…

>And every emacs user will have their own set of extensions, carefully curated. You'll find a lot of common extensions amongst power users. If you browse Emacs blog posts often, you'll see the same names popping up. For an overall view, I recommend Sacha Chua's weekly Emacs news: https://sachachua.com/blog/2019/06/2019-06-03-emacs-news/ And BTW, a number of the extensions listed on this submission (Org mode, calc, di…

You provided a “yet another list if extensions” (from literally hundreds of such lists).

Nearly every single one of those extensions needs to be set up, configured or tweaked in a certain way (the ways differ from extension to extension and how to tweak/configure them can often be found only after some rigorous googling).

And so, you end up with an init.el which is 1500 lines long (which is a magnitude more than some of my standalone production code :) ) or more (I’ve seen some huge monstrosities).

So in my case this led to a sort of fatigue in the end, and I gave up.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#95

Post by juandazapata » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

alpaca128 wrote: post #31

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…

Have you looked at Vimagit? I haven't used it but it's supposed to imitate magit in Vim.

Sadly, it's not even close.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#96

Post by anoncake » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #93

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…

* Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those Are you aware of Emacs with evil mode (i.e., Extensible VI Layer)? * https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil

Spacemacs uses Evil (and adds a lot of stuff (or bloat, depending on your point of view).

There's also Evil-collection which aims to better integrate Evil with a lot of other packages and features.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#97

Post by iak8god » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

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”?

I can get over "porcelain," but the Magit site would certainly benefit from better organization. You can skim the entire landing page without gaining much sense for what it's all about, and then it turns out that if you just click on the first screenshot on that page, you end up at "A visual walk-through" https://magit.vc/screenshots/, which is much more helpful. But you have to mouse over that screenshot and notice that the pointer changes in order to even realize that it's a link.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#98

Post by unhammer » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #65

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…

> One question I have to more experienced Emacs users: Can you recommend an email client? Contrary opinion from an experienced Emacs user (parts of my init.el are older than many users in this forum): I used to be a fan of Gnus, but then noticed that dragging attachments into E-mails is such a productivity booster than I switched to Mail and haven't looked back. If you are on a Mac, the combination of seamless drag&d…

You can drag attachments into Emacs from other programs, I do this on Linux at least

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#99

Post by lame88 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

So, emacs is a platform for text-based programs to do things that i already have other stable, reliable, and familiar programs to accomplish. I’m not sold. I need a better value proposition before i feel sold to spend my time climbing that learning curve.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#100

Post by bitcrusher » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

Cerium wrote: post #61

bitcrusher wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that your experience is yours but I also believe that you might be going about it the wrong way. First, you don't REALLY need to know anything but Meta-X and Control-XS, Control-XF, Control-XC to get going. Those aren't really that hard to remember or make muscle memory for, IMO. It IS hard to have to go back a bit to re-integrate how to do things in a new way if you're already happy with your existing w…

I would like to add control-g to the list. It is frustrating for new emacs users that it can be easy to get stuck. Control-g is the general "quit" which will get you back to editing text from most annoying situations.

Yes, I definitely missed that one. Good catch.