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Emacs is special regarding UIs

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131–140 of 418 posts

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#131

Post by fennecfoxen »

bartread wrote: post #123

This is somewhat oblique to the content of the post but "special" is about right. "Unnecessarily obtuse", particularly from a contemporary perspective, might be a less kind way to describe it. I could say the same about the documentation which, frankly, is not great at making you immediately productive. It's written like an academic treastise, not a tutorial for a piece of software that exists to help you get stuff d…

As a long time emacs user, I can confirm that emacs is terrible... and everything else out there is deficient. I can write custom code (ew, elisp) to determine how to switch between buffers (test buffer and code under test) and I can run my tests and find operations and the like in a first class buffer and a dozen things like that which are just incredibly painful in other editors.

Also I hit Cx-c by mistake thrice a week.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#132

Post by john4532452 »

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…

Emacs, org-mode, pdf-tool, org-roam. You are set for next 2 decades IMO for personal knowledge management.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#133

Post by morelisp »

wiredfool wrote: post #63
globular-toast wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... but it's not that slow. In practice, emacs works at least as fast as I can think most of the time. This is the most important thing for me. It's the reason why I originally switched to git from svn (Linus also specifically mentions this as a design choice for git). In this day with electron and editors like VSCode I wouldn't call emacs particularly slow.

I’m not sure about the others, but rjsx mode is slow with moderately complicated files, and the (idr which) accompanying refactor minor mode is glacial on a mbp.

rjsx is based on js2 which makes it unusually slow. js2 was a valiant attempt to make a major mode that uses elisp to actually parse the language. This gave it tremendous power compared to every non-Lisp major mode and most other JS editors at the time, but it has not aged especially well in modern JS support or performance.

I’d try one of the LSP based approaches instead these days.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#134

Post by narwally »

robenkleene wrote: post #84

What's the difference between what's being described here and the web? (In particular, Electron-based local applications which of course have a cross-platform web-based UI.) I'm not saying they aren't different, at the very least, Emacs prioritizes text, while the web prioritizes multimedia. But I'd love to hear other peoples takes on the differences.

> What's the difference between what's being described here and the web?

The web is generally terrible for accessibility. Since emacs has always prioritized maintaining compatibility between its graphical and text UIs, it words very well with screen readers and refreshable braille displays. It's also been designed from the beginning with keyboard navigation in mind.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#135

Post by NateEag »

rusk wrote: post #42
dheera wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You shouldn't even have to need filesystem API if you're just using it as an emacs client connecting to an emacs server. Your remark about GDPR is kind of strange ... not sure what that would have to do with anything ... GDPR applies to people and organisations, not their tools.

The requirement to advertise "we use cookies" and spam you with popups when you visit a site is frustrating for highly technical users.

OP is saying that Emacs-as-website would be frustrating if it had those popups.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#136

Post by john4532452 »

CKN23-ARIN wrote: post #105
john4532452 wrote: post #102

> I seldomly hear this property mentioned by anyone else, so even if it scratches OT-ness What does "OT-ness" stand for ?

Off-topicness

I could not find that in urban dictionary or google results.Is this commonly used in free software or open software mailing lists or did you just guessed it ?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#137

Post by jefftk »

A website can have this cross-modality UI property too, but most sites don't. This is partly cultural (emacs mode developers generally caring more) and partly about collaboration (it's much easier to upstream issues with an emacs mode than a site).

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#138

Post by slightwinder »

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.

Multi-decade effort..wasn't that done by just 2-3 guys as an alternative attempt?

Anyway, while elisp might not be the fastest language around, it's not the origin of all slowness in emacs. Crufted design is also a big culprit. The dated regex-machine is often mentioned as a big problem, making syntax highlighting especially painful.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#139

Post by GavinMcG »

chrisseaton wrote: post #122
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…

> Emacs is not a text editor https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ : > [Emacs is] an extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more

Emacs saying it's a text editor doesn't make it a text editor any more than Amazon saying it's a bookseller would make it a bookseller. Emacs-as-platform long ago overtook Emacs-as-text-editor.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#140

Post by detaro »

john4532452 wrote: post #136
CKN23-ARIN wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topicness

I could not find that in urban dictionary or google results.Is this commonly used in free software or open software mailing lists or did you just guessed it ?

OT for "Off-topic" is a very common abbreviation online, yes.
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