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Emacs is special regarding UIs

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101–110 of 418 posts

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#101

Post by eatmygodetia »

fierarul wrote: post #12

I thought it will be a criticism how everything seems off with the Emacs GUI from the copy-paste to the font rendering to the way scrolling is done, etc. I'd guess it managed to be so cross-platform by re-implementing everything, kinda like Java Swing but with less care for design. Now I understand how having a scriptable and text-based foundation would help with accessibility, just Emacs wins no UI contest.

In Emacs's defence, it didn't reimplement everything so mich as implement it first. When there's very little prior work to go on, often parts of the design won't be great, and then it becomes hard to move away from them.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#103

Post by my123 »

sz4kerto wrote: post #74
hpfr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shift away from X11 means no more forwarding X11 applications over ssh, which is slow at best and buggy and insecure at worst. A small price to pay for eliminating tearing and actually-secure screen locking. There are valid criticisms of the move to Wayland but I don’t really think this is one of them; if you really need remote access to graphical applications you almost certainly should not be using X forwarding…

That means no Linux GUI apps on Windows + WSL2. Sounds like a niche, but I see many devs using Windows + WSL2 + X forwarding to develop under Linux.

WSL2 has Wayland support upcoming (RDP-RAIL based, to integrate them to the regular desktop as separate windows)

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#104

Post by axilmar »

ywei3410 wrote: post #43
jmiskovic wrote: post #22

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?

> How does emacs UI work? Emacs has the idea of _buffers_ which are the actual window panes that you can view. The _buffer_ has data in the form of text which has properties in much the same way a block of html can have properties. An emacs-lisp function has full access to do anything it wants with the buffer. For example it can insert contents, change the font family, change the bit of text into a button with a call…

In other words, Emacs has its own markup language? how does emacs know that a specific bit of text is a button, for example?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#106

Post by roydivision »

dmortin wrote: post #46

Emacs is not a text editor, it's a platform independent VM which can run your scripts with a text UI. E.g. do you want keep an eye on some information which can be fetched from the net? You just write a script which regularly fetches the info and puts it into a buffer, so you can take a look at it anytime, and then regardless of platform you have that info readily available just by installing your own emacs config fi…

> It's much easier to write such things in emacs than curating various different scripts in various languages (python, etc.) which all require their specific support which is either available or not.

I disagree. I’ve been using Unix/Linux for 25 years, I’ve met maybe 1 or two people who know or use Emacs, whereas almost everyone knows enough to do some scripting.

I’m also guessing that installing and configuring Emacs is way more work than installing Python. And any gained Python knowledge will pay you back tenfold more than learning Emacs.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#107

Post by ungamedplayer »

jjbinx007 wrote: post #57
drsopp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Norton Commander, anyone? to this day there is no comparable tool Directory Opus. I've used it for nearly 30 years. First thing I install on Windows.

The MS-DOS version of XTree Gold was the best piece of software I used in the early 90s.

So true.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#108

Post by pvg »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45

Emacs and org-mode is frequently mentioned on HN as being awesome, but I don't feel like I could ever switch; I've got enough issues with vim already. For one, all the keyboard shortcuts and commands that you have to learn; I don't know if I have the capacity to learn all that anymore, not without deliberate practice, while in modern editors you can get by with keyboard + mouse and slowly learn some new shortcuts her…

I think your intuition is about right: the IDE is going to squish all before it at the environments/runtimes it supports well, the vi(m) obsession with modal keyboard golf is a waste of time and org mode is a curious subcult of the the already weird (but, like, totally different from those vim heretics!) emacs cult.

The other things are worth exploring for fun and curiosity but it's sensible to look at them as they are - beautiful rainbows rather than maps to buried pots of hyper-productivity.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#110

Post by auslegung »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45

Emacs and org-mode is frequently mentioned on HN as being awesome, but I don't feel like I could ever switch; I've got enough issues with vim already. For one, all the keyboard shortcuts and commands that you have to learn; I don't know if I have the capacity to learn all that anymore, not without deliberate practice, while in modern editors you can get by with keyboard + mouse and slowly learn some new shortcuts her…

Others have given great recommendations for emacs options that lower the learning curve, but if you're interested in vim instead of emacs, onivim does the same with vim. https://onivim.github.io
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