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Emacs is special regarding UIs

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Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#171

Post by jonfw »

indymike wrote: post #154
roydivision wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Honestly, getting going with emacs: $ sudo apt install emacs $ emacs From there it's learning some keystrokes. Payback? Almost immediate. And you can use it to work with Python, or any other language. After that, maybe reading a couple of howtos and installing a few add-on packages and customizing your configuration. Payback? Almost immediate. It's really productive.

> From there it's learning some keystrokes

Learning Emacs is VERY clearly not this trivial... to use Emacs to any extent where it's more useful than it's competitors, you have to learn the models it works in, a new programming language- and then there are a LOT of keystrokes

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#172

Post by rthomas6 »

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…

That sounds like something you could add to dired mode and bind to a key without too much trouble. It's my understanding that you sort of have to start molding emacs to your particular style, and that the defaults are kind of bad. I have switching windows bound to ctrl+direction. Super easy and convenient.

Also some of the plugins augment Emacs so much that some people see them as part of emacs rather than an add-on. I don't use dired; I use helm/ivy.

I am having good luck with Doom Emacs. You may want to check it out, especially if you are used to the Vim keybindings. It provides a lot of extra functionality out of the box.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#173

Post by shawnz »

slightwinder wrote: post #150
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.

The Webstack is far more complex than anything emacs offers. Emacs has just a wall of text with some special markup, but there is not concept of layout for this text, and all navigation is usually separate from the wall of text, making accesability significant simpler to handle. In emacs there is a beginning and an end, and you just follow the flow. In webstack you have elements, which have a position and if you are…

You could construct the same kinds of problematic UIs in Emacs too... it's just that Emacs is not as widely used as the Web and its users don't have such varying demands and use cases for it, so it's not as common for that to happen.

The Web is also designed around a linear flow of text. The Web also provides opportunities to make navigation semantics clear. The Web also implicitly supports keyboard navigation everywhere. etc. Although many websites try to work around those principles, is that a problem with the web or just the websites people are using today?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#174

Post by RMPR »

brabel wrote: post #78
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…

> you can get by with keyboard + mouse and slowly learn some new shortcuts here and there. Agree, but I am extremely used to the trackpad and haven't used a mouse in years... because of its closeness to the keyboard (in pretty much any laptop) I can do things very quickly when I have no shortcut at hand... so much so that I only find it worthwhile to memorize a few shortcuts for the tools I use most (the terminal, In…

> and a few for VS Code though I find their shortcuts terrible

You might have a better time using https://github.com/VSpaceCode/VSpaceCode

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#175

Post by welterde »

u801e wrote: post #151
welterde wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> it's a bit annoying if all you want is one window from the remote machine. You should try xrdp. It can work like X forwarding (single application window forwarding), but you can also attach or detach from a running application (like screen or tmux for X).

That's only really an alternative for long-running applications since it still seems quite tedious to do if I am not missing anything (with modifying initial_program and all).

Right now the workflow is simply ssh -X machine and then run some scripts that may or may not open interactive windows and then look at the result files using some graphical application. The same as if I was running it locally really (except on a beefy machine)..

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#176

Post by ziml77 »

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…

Personal 4th reason: My mind keeps going back to this when I think I want to try Emacs again

> [Every dynamic module] should also export a symbol named plugin_is_GPL_compatible to indicate that its code is released under the GPL or compatible license; Emacs will signal an error if your program tries to load modules that don't export such a symbol.

The viral nature of the GPL already bothers me. Emacs trying to enforce that I'm only running GPL compatible code is even worse.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#177

Post by fierarul »

hpfr wrote: post #99
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.

I don't know if I'd call it re implementation when the original Emacs is older than DOS and GNU Emacs, still maintained today, is older than Windows (1985). Emacs's keybindings, font rendering, and scrolling were just as valid then as any other approach. Let's at least avoid comparisons to Swing :). You can bind copy-and-paste as well as any other text wrangling functionality to whatever you want and there are ways t…

I understand, but 35 years have passed, no need to stick to the original implementation that long.

I'm a super basic user and nowadays basically have Emacs open all day just for org-mode. Nothing else.

To me it seems a terrible text editor and has an UI that's foreign on macOS and Ubuntu. It's unclear to me under what OS/Window manager/etc Emacs fits right at home. It seems out of this world.

I can imagine there may be some configuration that would fix some of these problems, but I just use Emacs as it comes out of the box.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#178

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

RMPR wrote: post #170
hpfr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it’s pretty safe to say https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs mostly solves of these concerns for Vim users in 2020. If you really can’t spend any time learning a few help keys then I guess I can’t recommend anything, but you’re here commenting so I bet you have some time :). Seriously, check out Doom, whether you use neovim, Emacs, VS Code, or nano (Doom has quite good Emacs and CUA bindings as well). I…

> I feel like it’s pretty safe to say https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs mostly solves of these concerns for Vim users in 2020 I use both doom emacs and neovim, and I'd say: not really, at least not for me, there are some Vim features evil doesn't emulate properly, or at least it doesn't work like in Vim. Off the top of my head, I write in many languages, but absolutely hate the US international keyboard for acce…

https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil/blob/3f3b2fea87172f155e5f...

It's defined in Evil (which Doom uses directly).

Seems like you just need to figure out your bug.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#179

Post by fierarul »

eatmygodetia wrote: post #101
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.

Interesting how somebody else claimed about the same thing.

Yes, but eons have passed, things are different. Should everything else mold to Emacs or should Emacs fit into the overall OS/window manager/etc.

Maybe Emacs really is supposed to be an OS. I'm now wondering if there's a way to boot straight into Emacs. Clearly we could have a slimmer kernel /loader for that. :-)

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#180

Post by blablablerg »

agumonkey wrote: post #92
blablablerg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you don't even have to understand it fully, that is what is great about it. What it is good for is that it gives you maximal freedom in organizing things the way you want. When I start out with a new org file, I just make lists and add functionality when needed. While with most other todo/organizing applications you tend to be forced in some framework. This is how you should organize, and when you want to deviat…

oh you're assuming that not using org means using another organizer[0].. I just stopped organizing :D who knows, maybe one day I'll finally see the light [0] and I fully agree that most systems are way less ergonomic than emacs

Haha yeah I also never planned, I hated it. Still do actually. But one day I was fed up with the chaos in my life, dirty house and minimal productivity that I decided.. I need structure. I realized that the time I invest in structure pays itself out, because I spend less time goofing around. And so started the great journey in finding the best todo system. I started with paper, then google calendar/tasks, todoist and load of other apps until I finally went back to paper. The apps were just too cumbersome. Paper was simple and worked, but unfortunately paper itself is difficult to organize. I always avoided orgmode because well.. I was scared of emacs but eventually decided to give it a go, see what happens. And it was what I have been looking for all along: a simple and flexible system. And vim keybindings are a big bonus :)
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