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Emacs is special regarding UIs

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Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#21

Post by rossvor »

5h wrote: post #8
melling wrote: post #3

Emacs Lisp is slow. There has been a multi-decade effort to make Guile support ELisp, and using Guile to make Emacs more performant. Cross platform UI, with a faster Lisp, would allow Emacs to be even more special.

As a non Emacs user, is the speed of Emacs Lisp a frustration in typical day to day usage?

Speaking as recent(4-5 months) Emacs(spacemacs) convert - it is slower compared to even "decked out" vim. An important caveat to mention is that it very much depends on what modes you are operating in -- each file type will usually operate in its own mode, with varying performance. In my experience the lagginess is rare, but its very workflow dependent, there's this one large(1.5k line) php file I have to edit semi-regularly on which I switch off the php mode, just to avoid the pain of jankiness. It isn't very noticeable in other, "regular" sized files.

But overall I'm a very happy emacs convert. It's extremely malleable and pleasant development environment and I think it definitely deserves all the gushing articles/posts its been receiving past few years.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#22

Post by jmiskovic »

How does emacs UI work? It seems like each script is registering commands it can run in context of mode, and then you can bind key combos to commands. How do textual UIs do things like layouting of controls, updating of values and handling async requests?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#23

Post by abdullahkhalids »

skissane wrote: post #7

I can think of a few UI styles Emacs doesn't support (to my knowledge) – line mode terminals, block mode terminals (such as IBM 3270 and 5250), and HTML. Now, whether any of those UI styles are actually worth supporting is a completely different question. But it is not quite as universal in support of different UIs as this email claims. (You can technically write line mode applications in Emacs Lisp, try `emacs -batc…

Emacs support of non-fixed width fonts is also pretty bad. My language Urdu is basically impossible to write on Emacs - or at least it was 5 years ago when I struggled with it a lot.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#24

Post by dheera »

rusk wrote: post #13
skissane wrote: post #7

I can think of a few UI styles Emacs doesn't support (to my knowledge) – line mode terminals, block mode terminals (such as IBM 3270 and 5250), and HTML. Now, whether any of those UI styles are actually worth supporting is a completely different question. But it is not quite as universal in support of different UIs as this email claims. (You can technically write line mode applications in Emacs Lisp, try `emacs -batc…

Interesting ... has anybody tried a browser based (which is what I presume you mean by HTML) front end for emacs? EDIT - just to be clear, I'm talking about emacsclient, talking to a emacs server. Not an actual full blown emacs implementation that's just stupid.

With the new Chrome filesystem API it should be possible to make a full browser implementation.

Let's just hope they don't have annoying GDPR and other popups when you're trying to edit a file.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#25

Post by ywei3410 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #23
skissane wrote: post #7

I can think of a few UI styles Emacs doesn't support (to my knowledge) – line mode terminals, block mode terminals (such as IBM 3270 and 5250), and HTML. Now, whether any of those UI styles are actually worth supporting is a completely different question. But it is not quite as universal in support of different UIs as this email claims. (You can technically write line mode applications in Emacs Lisp, try `emacs -batc…

Emacs support of non-fixed width fonts is also pretty bad. My language Urdu is basically impossible to write on Emacs - or at least it was 5 years ago when I struggled with it a lot.

The HarfBuzz font engine should help.

What trouble were you having with specifically?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#26

Post by mkesper »

smitty1e wrote: post #18

For those with wretched joints (me), Spacemacs[1] is a way to have all that org-mode[2] functionality, the joys of magit[3] and have it all work well over SSH. Leave all the icons to their fans. [1] https://www.spacemacs.org/ [2] https://orgmode.org/ [3] https://magit.vc/

After finding doom-emacs, I love that even more. Almost instant startup, non-broken magit key bindings, doom doctor etc.

https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#27

Post by warpech »

dheera wrote: post #24
rusk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting ... has anybody tried a browser based (which is what I presume you mean by HTML) front end for emacs? EDIT - just to be clear, I'm talking about emacsclient, talking to a emacs server. Not an actual full blown emacs implementation that's just stupid.

With the new Chrome filesystem API it should be possible to make a full browser implementation. Let's just hope they don't have annoying GDPR and other popups when you're trying to edit a file.

There must be someone working on Emacs in Electron as we speak. I found some gist that's 2 years old: https://gist.github.com/chrisdone/f874ac1c872c004d6ce9e3cb20...

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#28

Post by yaantc »

venamresm__ wrote: post #5
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #2

Not that it's anything like Emacs, but would SIM Application Toolkit be considered kind of similar? It provided almost a lowest-common-denominator user interface for apps, which could actually run in the smartphone era, although with practically no advantages over a native app.

You'd be surprised to hear STK is still in use even today by big mobile operators. Some even go as far as to launch campaigns to install STK applets on millions of devices and customers have no idea this is happening in the background.

Yes, all the "eSIM" over-the-air management uses the STK for example. But to be fair, the user interface part is no longer used. The part of the STK still in use is what is required to support remote management functions between the network operator and some applet on the SIM card. The user is out of the loop, and it's perfectly fine for a modem not to support the user interaction part of the STK.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#29

Post by beojan »

rossvor wrote: post #21
5h wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non Emacs user, is the speed of Emacs Lisp a frustration in typical day to day usage?

Speaking as recent(4-5 months) Emacs(spacemacs) convert - it is slower compared to even "decked out" vim. An important caveat to mention is that it very much depends on what modes you are operating in -- each file type will usually operate in its own mode, with varying performance. In my experience the lagginess is rare, but its very workflow dependent, there's this one large(1.5k line) php file I have to edit semi-r…

Spacemacs is actually quite a bit slower than it probably needs to be (by which I mean "slower than Doom emacs [https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs]").

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#30

Post by DreamyCori »

smitty1e wrote: post #18

For those with wretched joints (me), Spacemacs[1] is a way to have all that org-mode[2] functionality, the joys of magit[3] and have it all work well over SSH. Leave all the icons to their fans. [1] https://www.spacemacs.org/ [2] https://orgmode.org/ [3] https://magit.vc/

Anyone is info about the release model of Spacemacs ? It seems like nothing is moving. Any news ?
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