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Toward a “modern” Emacs

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Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#251

Post by quadrifoliate »

rpdillon wrote: post #179
quadrifoliate wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel old when I see ”modern Emacs” and think “Oh, maybe they are finally either finishing off Guile Emacs, or porting the extension language to Common Lisp”. I guess I agree that ibuffer should be part of the standard distribution. Less sure about undo-tree, but could be an option if the authors released it under appropriate licenses (I understand that contributing code to Emacs is somewhat cumbersome; although if…

ibuffer is part of the standard distribution, it's just not called by C-x C-b by default (that's bound to list-buffers instead).

Sorry, turns out I was thinking of ivy-switch-buffer, not ibuffer. You are absolutely right though.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#252

Post by bJGVygG7MQVF8c »

brandonmenc wrote: post #225
bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a generation, vim and emacs will still be around with their minuscule but loyal user bases of tinkerers and VS code will have long been replaced by something newer and flashier.

Well, Eclipse has had practically two decades of vi/emacs users shitting on it and yet it is still popular enough to warrant an entire conference. https://www.eclipsecon.org/2020

I'd argue that Eclipse is more like vim and emacs than it is like VS Code.

Better analogues to the latter, imo: BBEdit, TextMate, Sublime Text, Atom

Obviously those still have users, but in that particular market niche the turnover is higher.

What determines long-run resilience is less feature sets than the distribution and development models.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#253

Post by incompatible »

dragandj wrote: post #145
acqq wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what I never understood -- I've implemented exactly this "which editor emulation do you want to use" and "edit your own bindings" for one Windows product containing editor in early nineties. It wasn't hard. The default was, of course, the "least surprising" for the platform, but it also allowed other popular editors then. If there's anything that can reduce friction to the new user, it's that: a beginner can…

In Emacs, you can configure literally anything, including the keybindings . Some people use Emacs with Vim keybindings (Evil, Spacemacs, Doom). Now, for me, typical Emacs keybindings, of which the majority is defined in 3rd party packages are very logical, while Vim's are not. But the users who prefer the Vim way did they work and configured Emacs however they liked. OTOH, of the million people who complain and ask f…

Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are only two bindings, it's hardly a big deal. But I've used Emacs for decades, and I expect a lot of control-key bindings, to the point that remapping the CapsLock key as an extra control is a vital part of making a computer usable.

Do other editors have the CapsLock binding problem, or do they generally rely on something other than control keys?

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#254

Post by BeetleB »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #233
BeetleB wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nicely formatted math. Can you elaborate? With a keystroke, it renders a LaTeX formula inline.

this could sway me, as a novice, whats the mininum amount of steps (from necessary packages to install to actual inline math output o screen) to demonstrate this?

First, the proper way would be to use the appropriate mode for LaTeX (auctex). It has a keybinding.

I don't use that mode, though, do I can't tell you how to set it up. I use org-mode, which lets you embed LaTeX formulae. I use this often, but surprisingly am not seeing anything in my Emacs config for this, so it may work out of the box. You do need some packages installed on your machine (dvipng, latex, etc). I already had them installed, so for me it was a simple matter of the keybinding: C-c C-x C-l

Details from the manual:

https://orgmode.org/manual/Previewing-LaTeX-fragments.html

Perhaps a friendlier guide:

https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-preview.htm...

If you're not familiar with org-mode, it is highly recommended. Its learning curve is quite shallow. I'm sure there are tutorials out there, but for me the Google Tech Talk was enough to get me started and convince me I should use it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM

Ever since I encountered org mode, I author everything with it: LaTeX, HTML, DOC files, etc.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#255

Post by new_realist »

mapgrep wrote: post #28

I don’t know. I read the whole article and it seems the suggestions boil down to emacs needing to be more “modern” by defaulting to dark mode, making color theming easier, changing right click behavior, the menus, and changing the shortcuts. And the author of the article would like the development process to be more “modern.” Emacs is one of the most successful text editors of all time if not the most successful. It…

The lesson is to be the first editor with an API and plugin system. That’s the trick. It’s like QWERTY.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#256

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #95
danShumway wrote: post #84

Do the defaults in Emacs matter, at all? Doom Emacs, Spacemacs, and dozens of other default configs already exist. I've been using Emacs for years, I never learned the default keybindings. I used Evil mode right from the start. I just don't see this as a real problem. A small (incomplete) list of real problems: - No timeline on Wayland support, Wayland will likely require substantial work and refactoring. - Performan…

That was touched on in the article: > Some of the ideas found in these distributions may well merit inclusion in Emacs, but that does not happen. Emacs maintainer Eli Zaretskii complained that the creators of these distributions do not contribute their work back. If the changes aren't being contributed back, any gain from them is lost for users of the default system. Creating an unnecessary fork within the user base,…

I'm not convinced there's a lot from Doom/Spacemacs that could reasonably be contributed back to Emacs. It's mostly installing and configuring other packages to have a nice default setup.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#257

Post by BeetleB »

MinusGix wrote: post #159
quadrifoliate wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emacs has a lot of selling points, but the keybindings aren't one of them. I find this difficult to understand for people who use the terminal. The keybindings are the exact same for most terminals by default, since they use readline. Want to go to the end of your command? `Ctrl-E`. Want to go to the beginning? `Ctrl-A`. Want to search backwards through history? `Ctrl-R` (same thing you would do while searching bac…

Personally, out of those I've only used Ctrl-R in the terminal. I just use the Home/End keys to navigate to the start/end of lines. I was actually surprised to read that Ctrl-E and Ctrl-A would do that. I usually expect Ctrl-A to select all, and don't really expect anything from Ctrl-E. (Though, I'd be surprised if home/end didn't work in Emacs, I'm just saying I've never used those readline keybinds).

> I just use the Home/End keys to navigate to the start/end of lines.

If true, my guess is these were added to the shells recently (e.g. last 15 years). When I started using Linux (in the 2000's), these keybindings didn't work. It was Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E. I'd love to do a survey to see how many shell users use these vs Home/End.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#258

Post by JoshTriplett »

konjin wrote: post #155
zarkov99 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's over 40 years old but it has fewer and fewer users younger than that. VS code is rapidly taking over it's niche and without modernization, of many kinds, emacs will die out in a generation.

When you've been warned the world will end and ~~notepad~~ VS code will take over for 50 years you tend to become blase about the whole thing. Emacs has a steep learning curve and that's good. You need a moat to keep the barbarians from destroying your kingdom.

> Emacs has a steep learning curve and that's good. You need a moat to keep the barbarians from destroying your kingdom.

Most of the emacs community radiates that same attitude, which is one reason it stays where it is and doesn't flourish.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#259

Post by baby »

jorams wrote: post #245
baby wrote: post #157

All of these are missing the point imo. The biggest advantage of modern IDE is the ease in trying new plugins and functionalities. Everything is a menu away, and fuzzy searching makes it easy to find out commands and learn their shortcuts. This whole process just doesn’t exist in emacs. To get a plugin, it’s a huge step (setting up custom elisp to get melpa) and then it’s a huge learning curve just to try a plugin.

I don't really get what you mean. Sure, setting up MELPA is a bit annoying, but after that trying a new package is trivial. You go to the package list and install the package, then you trigger whatever command you need. I agree that fuzzy search is a great thing though, and I think something similar to Ivy should be included by default.

> then you trigger whatever command you need

how do you do see? How do you get to the list of commands? How do you search for a command? How do you remember a shortcut if you run a command manually?

I've been using emacs for quite some time and I still get stuck there.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#260

Post by ssivark »

BeetleB wrote: post #220
ssivark wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is not willing to learn how to enable CUA mode in the config file, then it is highly unlikely they will ever learn to use the features that make Emacs salient. I think that’s uncharitable. For a newbie low on confidence it’s often death by a thousand (paper) cuts: CUA mode, Surprising undo model, How to download packages, How do I enable fringes/margins, Windows-vs-frames, etc. Each small change has a co…

> Surprising undo model I tend to get surprised by this complaint - especially in the article where undo-tree was recommended as an alternative. Both the Emacs undo and undo-tree are "surprising" models in that very few standard editors support anything beyond the most basics. Personally, I've not had trouble with Emacs's undo (beyond it not visualizing it). Switching to undo-tree may be OK, but it's still surprising…

I don’t wish to do a point-by-point rebuttal as you’re entitled to your view — just that it misses the perspective of a large fraction users. As for me, I’m fairly happy using Emacs Doom.

> While I agree that a convenient way to download things from MELPA would be nice, I hardly see not having it as a barrier. Most people new to, say, Visual Studio don't start with "How do I download plugins".

I think this statement is untethered from reality, and matches approximately zero people I know. Almost everyone using a text editor is using it for purposes which would definitely be helped by task-specific enhancements (plugins which are typically much easier to get in other editors/IDEs)

> I did not have access to an expert. I simply read a book on it [...] given that the only reason I began using Emacs is that the other option people led me to (vi) was even harder to do basic text editing.

Yes, and the fact of the matter is that today people have many editor options which are very powerful and also have a much friendlier learning curve.

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