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Emacs is special regarding UIs

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Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#111

Post by tluyben2 »

drsopp wrote: post #17
jwr wrote: post #11

One begins to understand the advantages of this approach after 10-15 years or so. I feel that I am constantly being forced into new "UI paradigms", and it isn't always a change for the better. I started with DOS (Norton Commander, anyone? to this day there is no comparable tool), then Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (which was mostly garbage and I did not enjoy the UI at all). I then started using Linux and discovered Emacs. Whe…

> 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.

Or FAR.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#112

Post by dmortin »

roydivision wrote: post #106
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 Emac…

I meant the case when you have to use an other machine and naturally emacs users want to use emacs even there, so that's given. But on Windows, for example, python may not be installed, so that's an extra install, while if you have your usual scripts in emacs then it's just a matter of installing one's emacs config which one does anyway.

I use python too when it's the less hassle. E.g. when parsing a page with BeatifulSoup which would be more cumbersome in emacs without BeautifulSoup.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#113

Post by kalium-xyz »

hpfr wrote: post #91
laex wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Doom better than Spacemacs ?

I would say the Emacs user mindshare has shifted somewhat to Doom. There are a lot of Doom fans on r/emacs now, and the Discord is huge compared to what it was. Many new contributors are cropping up. Even some developers of well-known packages, like org-roam, have switched to Doom. Take it from him, not me! https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/migrating_to_doom_emacs/ Compared to Spacemacs, which has complex abstraction lay…

You can just use the things you like from either, thats the best part of emacs.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#114

Post by roel_v »

jwr wrote: post #11

One begins to understand the advantages of this approach after 10-15 years or so. I feel that I am constantly being forced into new "UI paradigms", and it isn't always a change for the better. I started with DOS (Norton Commander, anyone? to this day there is no comparable tool), then Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (which was mostly garbage and I did not enjoy the UI at all). I then started using Linux and discovered Emacs. Whe…

"(Norton Commander, anyone? to this day there is no comparable tool)"

If you're on Windows, try xyplorer. I can't remember anything NC did that xyplorer doesn't, and it does a lot more, too.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#115

Post by cmiles74 »

akho wrote: post #67
swiley wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really honestly don’t like X11. I’ve poked around in the source a couple times and it confuses and scares me. I love the idea of moving entirely to just one graphics API and keeping the server simple. Until wayland has decent performance though I don’t think I’ll ever switch. None of the apps I use are native (except possibly Firefox and some EDA tools but only if gtk is set up right?) I thought my new phone would…

Network transparency has grown a lot more important for me over the last few years. It’s not really network transparency, though, it’s more vm/container transparency: if your dev environment is in a vm, and includes anything graphical, you need it. With WSL wayland is not even an option.

Microsoft is actively working on adding Wayland support to WSL2.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsof...

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#116

Post by dmortin »

agumonkey wrote: post #60
submeta wrote: post #59

Emacs + org has the potential to be the dream environment for everybody with a hacker mindset: Automate everything that has to do with text: Journaling, writing todo lists, parsing your Kindle highlights file (`My Clippings.txt'), writing project outlines, doing web research and saving your searches, notes, thoughts, summaries in Emacs via org-capture, drafting papers in org-mode, creating (text-based) tables and ove…

I hate org. I use emacs 25/7, I hate org. Something about it rubs me the wrong way, yet I use it but only the basic parts. I think it's that I can't wrap my head around the mental model of it, and since it encompasses 2000 topics (trees, timing, workflow, states, agenda, journaling, tagging) it's like a mountain of mud before my eyes.

You can use as much or as little of org as you want. It's perfectly allright to use only a subset of it. I do. I only use what I need.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#117

Post by DreamyCori »

dunefox wrote: post #81
DreamyCori wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like doom-emacs is the new way to go. I feel quiet sad about this cause I spent some time to switch to Spacemacs and now I have to move to another emacs distro.

Why do you have to move? Are you using the dev-branch Spacemacs or master?

master cause I want something stable.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#118

Post by dmortin »

axilmar wrote: post #104
ywei3410 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Characters can have various properties set. These are either built in or you can define your own properties too.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#119

Post by welterde »

twic wrote: post #95
znpy wrote: post #73

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. Yes but sometimes you really need that and it's a life saver. EDIT: I just remembered about LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) which many schools used to lower the TCO of computing infrastructure. That relied heavily on Xorg's network transparency. I wonder what will happen to LTSP

For terminal server use cases, there are things like VNC, SPICE, NX, etc. The X11/ssh thing is for when you want to run a mix of local and remote applications on a single desktop, which i think is pretty unusual these days.

Is it really that unusual to do some data reduction/analysis on a beefy dedicated machine and wanting to look at the results right away using the same terminal instead of having to copy the result files or using a shared network file system? Even more important if it involves any graphical interactions.

Sure, one could use a remote desktop to do same thing, but it's a bit annoying if all you want is one window from the remote machine.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#120

Post by ch_123 »

WanderPanda wrote: post #32
jwr wrote: post #11

One begins to understand the advantages of this approach after 10-15 years or so. I feel that I am constantly being forced into new "UI paradigms", and it isn't always a change for the better. I started with DOS (Norton Commander, anyone? to this day there is no comparable tool), then Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (which was mostly garbage and I did not enjoy the UI at all). I then started using Linux and discovered Emacs. Whe…

What is idiotic about the Touchbar that is not idiodic about function keys? You have to look at your keyboard to hit the function keys, why not use the glance for a visual feedback loop?

On a physical keyboard, the gaps and contours of the keys give your fingers an indication that they are pressing a single key, as opposed to a blank space or the gaps between two keys. This, combined with the grouping, makes it viable to use function keys without looking at them.
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