Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
hongchao.me
Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
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Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#2This is pretty tangential, but I don't understand why there isn't a roguelike framework available for Emacs. It seems like the perfect roguelike platform for playtesting and hacking on and would on-board a lot of new people into the Emacsen ecology without any real difficulty. The standard roguelike library libtocd has bindings for every other language--why not elisp?
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#3This is pretty tangential, but I don't understand why there isn't a roguelike framework available for Emacs. It seems like the perfect roguelike platform for playtesting and hacking on and would on-board a lot of new people into the Emacsen ecology without any real difficulty. The standard roguelike library libtocd has bindings for every other language--why not elisp?
I've wondered the same thing! In particular, the highly polished and powerful interfaces of some roguelikes (DCSS comes to mind) strongly remind me of Emacs. It seems like the scriptability and power of Emacs interfaces is a natural fit for roguelikes.
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#4I think specifically, transient.el is the 2d CLI. https://github.com/magit/transient
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#5So is vim? Not to rehash the same battle that’s likely older than most of us are, but both emacs and vim are text editors taken to their logical conclusion. Both can do pretty much the exact same thing as each other, if only because some neckbeard in the 80s wrote that feature to score points in the great vim/emacs saga.
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#6I love Emacs, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a lot harder to use than Visual Studio Code, which is vastly more popular. I think what made VSCode popular was the availability of many high-quality extensions for major languages. Unfortunately, my experience with Elisp packages is that they tend to be much less stable. This is changing some with LSP mode, of course, but I think the Emacs community would do well to focus on improving the story for plug-in stability in the long-term. I already have to install use-package to make handling packages reasonable, which is not something I have to do in other editors. Manually setting up hooks for them is a pain in the ass too.
I once submitted a bug to the Emacs mailing list and after determining it was indeed a defect, a flame war ensued between maintainers of different subsystems that were competing over how a specific feature was supposed to be used, which was the source of the bug. It was offputting and felt juvenile. Social problems are inevitable in any open source project, but I can’t help but wonder if the highly dynamic nature of Emacs Lisp causes more problems than a less dynamic language would.
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#7So is vim? Not to rehash the same battle that’s likely older than most of us are, but both emacs and vim are text editors taken to their logical conclusion. Both can do pretty much the exact same thing as each other, if only because some neckbeard in the 80s wrote that feature to score points in the great vim/emacs saga.
The way I see it, emacs is really an idea.
Vim is a text editor that grew into an ecosystem of people bolting on additional functionality. While extensibility is possible, it's nowhere near as transparent and consistent as the emacs environment. In fact no system I know of comes even close.
Emacs paved the way for the features we take for granted in graphical applications like undo, copy+paste, search, find+replace, spell check, project navigation, code completion, auto-formatting, and of course, plugins.
These days, indeed much of the appeal is gone if all you're doing is comparing features at a surface level.
Yes, it looks like all editors "do the same thing" but really emacs is quite different in spirit.
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#8So is vim? Not to rehash the same battle that’s likely older than most of us are, but both emacs and vim are text editors taken to their logical conclusion. Both can do pretty much the exact same thing as each other, if only because some neckbeard in the 80s wrote that feature to score points in the great vim/emacs saga.
Not interested in editor wars, but regarding the OP, Emacs has a fundamentally different architecture to vim and always has, lending it to the sort of customizability the article focuses on. It's essentially just a lisp interpreter that you can customize completely.
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#9So is vim? Not to rehash the same battle that’s likely older than most of us are, but both emacs and vim are text editors taken to their logical conclusion. Both can do pretty much the exact same thing as each other, if only because some neckbeard in the 80s wrote that feature to score points in the great vim/emacs saga.
The way I see it, emacs is really an idea. Vim is a text editor that grew into an ecosystem of people bolting on additional functionality. While extensibility is possible, it's nowhere near as transparent and consistent as the emacs environment. In fact no system I know of comes even close. Emacs paved the way for the features we take for granted in graphical applications like undo, copy+paste, search, find+replace,…
If emacs adopted vim-like keybindings early on the war would have ended. It's the only reason I stick with vim, and I suspect I'm not alone. Yes, yes, evil mode and whatever, but it's not seamless - you still have to get familiar with emacs keybindings.
Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface
#10So is vim? Not to rehash the same battle that’s likely older than most of us are, but both emacs and vim are text editors taken to their logical conclusion. Both can do pretty much the exact same thing as each other, if only because some neckbeard in the 80s wrote that feature to score points in the great vim/emacs saga.
The way I see it, emacs is really an idea. Vim is a text editor that grew into an ecosystem of people bolting on additional functionality. While extensibility is possible, it's nowhere near as transparent and consistent as the emacs environment. In fact no system I know of comes even close. Emacs paved the way for the features we take for granted in graphical applications like undo, copy+paste, search, find+replace,…
Discovering emacs on OS X Tiger was my first true introduction to the power of TUI/CLI. I use vim now, and Atom with vim bindings, but I have to agree that there’s something special about the spirit of emacs.