Emacs is special regarding UIs • Hacker News Board

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#281

Post by taeric » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

fierarul wrote: post #177

hpfr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For those of us that have used emacs for a long time, it is the other items that feel foreign. And, quite frankly, I'm not sure I'm missing anything from the others.

It is annoying that Apple has a command key that I have mapped as Meta. Since that means if I try to copy something in Firefox, closed tab. That said, why are the keyboard shortcuts in so many other applications so destructive? And crappy? Browsers could be forgiven if they were just for viewing, but you edit in them a lot nowadays, such that the browser not having easily customized keyboard bindings is a laughable insult for user centric design.

(Do they even still pretend to support user stylesheets anymore?)

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#282

Post by taeric » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

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…

I think you have never looked at the customize screens.

Not to mention that many of us have used emacs for email for ages. Which, lo and behold, is dynamic with parts loading before or after others. Even viewing images inline has been doable for a long time.

Don't get me wrong. Emacs has stayed mostly text focused. Even mostly linear focused, I would agree. I view that as a plus, though. The modern web world? Not so much. And telling that most "resurgences" of popular sites and ideas are usually a return to a linear treatment of data. Often most of the extra crap around are flashy graphics or desperate attempts to get more interaction from users.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#283

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #218

agumonkey wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be the right timing for an ergonomic revamp. As much as I like the old habits, I agree that some parts really need to be rebalanced. And emacs is moving faster these days so maybe a mutation can happen A slightly nicer embedded docs. They were great for 80s way of life, but it could use a slightly more reply (to stay in the context of a live editor / lisp machine). Maybe a text demo system.. after all you co…

I'm a huge , huge , huuuge fan of hydras. They're a big part of what make Emacs useable for me. I have set up hydras for pretty much every major mode I use (except magit, which kind of has its own hydra-like menu system). Because of hydras, I don't have to remember all the arcane keyboard shortcuts these modes have bound by default, and don't have to look up how to run a function that's not bound at all. All I have t…

more generally auto-completion helps users go combinatorial on new territory

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#284

Post by tom_ » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

rleigh wrote: post #149

Some of its paradigms are plain stupid. C-Z (in the GUI) triggers minimise of the window. In a shell, that's fine. It suspends the process. In a GUI it is just bloody annoying. There's a perfectly good minimise button if I want it. This is just a frustration every time I fat-finger C-X. Which is used so frequently it's just asking to be pressed by accident.

I don't rate this shortcut either, but there's an easy fix for your .emacs:

    (when window-system
      (global-unset-key (kbd "C-z")))

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#285

Post by antonvs » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #75

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've never been a vim user, but regarding keyboard shortcuts, there's Evil[1], which is fairly popular. 1: https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil

There's also Spacemacs: "Emacs advanced kit focused on Evil. A community-driven Emacs distribution." https://www.spacemacs.org/

It made emacs a bit more accessible for me.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#286

Post by znpy » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

hpfr wrote: post #82

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

Honestly, I think people's reliance on X forwarding is just due to the fact that it happens to exist, not because they really need it. There's nothing like X forwarding on Windows to my knowledge. If X forwarding didn't exist people would have figured out how to do what they needed over SSH with text or when GUI's are irreplaceable sysadmins would have set up an actual remote desktop solution like on other modern ope…

You haven't worked in operations, have you?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#287

Post by znpy » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #166

worik wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the original reason to invent X. Literally

And the adoption has been huge outside of Unix circles... MacOS doesn't use it, Windows doesn't use it. Even Linux is moving away from it. That's pretty damning for X as a technology during a time when even Windows has started to offer native curl and ssh, just saying.

Still there are xservers for both windows and Mac. How comes?

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#288

Post by vladvasiliu » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #157

vladvasiliu wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, RDP allows you to only launch one application as opposed to a whole desktop. They call that RemoteApp. That you can't just launch that on every machine you want (in particular non server installs) is more a limitation of Microsoft's licensing model than of the protocol itself. For me, from a usability point of view, RDP runs circles around the other solutions. I've used this fairly often during the lockd…

RDP works well if you want to connect to a remote machine, then work only on that machine for a significant amount of time. For me, I need to switch in and out of several different RDP sessions, which is a nightmare. Alt tab works either within a session if full screened, or within the local computer if not full screened. That means I need to also periodically use ctrl alt break to switch between full screen and wind…

My point was that RDP, the protocol, works very well and is able to adapt to network conditions.

For your "nested session", the problem is that the adaptive nature of the protocol breaks down if the first hop has a very good connection to the destination. However, you're holding^w using it wrong. In this kind of scenario, I think MS recommends using a remote desktop gateway, which also works very well. I think one of the great advantages of RDP over ssh X forwarding is that it can use UDP.

I definitely dislike how you have to have a Windows server installation and specific license to set up remote app, though. But I've filed this under "it's Microsoft, what can you expect?".

I also find windows administration horrible, be it via remote desktop or keyboard plugged directly in the server. I grew up with Linux and macOS, so it was always a pain when I absolutely had to give someone a hand with something windows-related (my client has a bunch of Windows servers).

But still, I'm not the kind to throw away the baby with the bathwater and to think that if I generally dislike and would avoid a company's products every single thing that they do is bad. I really wish Linux could have something similar to RDP in performance. It makes me sad when I vnc to a computer across the room and the thing lags more than RDP to some windows box in another country.

edit: Regarding your having to work with several RDP sessions at the same time, it baffles me that the worst RDP client I have ever used is the windows one. I don't use windows on my machines, and the Linux client (Remmina) is absolutely a dream, especially when running on i3 (so there's no conflict with win / alt-tab / etc). Also, MS's mac client works very well and there's no key conflicts there either. You may want to look into the new Remote Desktop app on windows (not quite sure what it's called, it's on the windows store). It now supports window resizing and easier switching between sessions.

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#289

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #202

boogies wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Norton Commander, anyone? to this day there is no comparable tool What’s the problem with Midnight Commander and/or the 23 other programs at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander#Norton_Comman... ?

Midnight Commander is nowhere near where Norton Commander was in terms of usability. Some of that is because of platform restrictions (terminal and keyboard access limitations) and some because of a difference in philosophy. Norton Commander was simple, but it got the simple things right.

While I don't like Midnight Commander's keybindings, do note that it can do quite a bit that Norton couldn't (e.g. ssh - incredibly handy).

If you want a closer clone to Norton Commander, try FAR Manager: https://www.farmanager.com/ (Windows only)

Re: Emacs is special regarding UIs

#290

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

hpfr wrote: post #62

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…

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…

Tearing has nothing to do with network transparency and everything to do with crappy closed source drivers. Xorg on Windows doesn't have these problems nor does it on Linux with supported hardware.