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Emacs Is Not Enough

project-mage.org

71–80 of 163 posts

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#71

Hi! I am the author. I will be glad to answer any questions. First of all, I don't want another Emacs rewrite, much less in Guile. Mixing languages is not good for power-use, which requires ease-of-use, or at least conceptual simplicity. I talk more about it in the article in the Project's Philosophy/Homogeneity section in [1] The Power of Structure. I am proposing we need to really start considering a different para…

I find most of your complaints incomprehensible.

> Well, alright, I don't see no CSV-mode to arrange everything into a pretty table and then let me filter/sort/edit the damn thing.

`csv-mode` is right there on ELPA, the default package source for Emacs. You went to MELPA, which only has packages from people who don’t want to license their code the same way as Emacs. Install `csv-mode`, then type `C-c C-a` to format it into columns, `C-c C-s` to sort by a field, and `C-c C-n` to sort numerically by a field.

> A table editor within emacs will be janky, it will be a slow heap of cowdung, outspreading and dispersing, channeling the fumes.

This is completely wrong. There are half a dozen Emacs packages that give you variations on the theme of a table, and none of them are slow or janky in my experience.

> Well, scrolling that thing was not fun, I will tell you that. Neither was getting spammed with:

All the errors you report look like they were caused by packages you have installed, not Emacs itself.

> Timed out waiting for property-notify event

This one is actually caused by your clipboard manager rather than an Emacs package.

Etc.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#72
post #21
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Print debugging is a technique that will never go out of style. It works on any system, is used by programmers of any level of experience, is very quick to use and requires no tooling to understand. And sometimes, even if you do have other great tools at your disposal, it’s still the easiest way to track down a problem.

Well yes, but I must quibble... > Print debugging.... It works on any system No it does not. It requires a console, and not all systems have a console.

Do you have an example of one that doesn't have one?

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does that mean? That means they are trying to solve some very difficult, general problem first. But, you see, that's exactly the problem: you don't want to go general. You want to go: specialized. And here's the key: then you want to mix and do the interplay for your simple, specialized well-working elements. And, indeed, you can define some general interface properties for that, once you have it. > Getting si…

> trying to find a general structure and fit it for everything is a path to failure Depends on whether you consider everything literal. That nothing can solve everything and your mother is obvious. But solutions which can handle majority, or even 99.99% of relevant cases of your domain, I think we already have that today for structures. XML for example was optimized for decades to handle structures. Not all parts are…

> So instead of build yet another new solution, maybe just look at the existing tools and how we can make them more useable for your usecases.

Existing solutions don't integrate within an environment, and not within each other.

> XML

I go into much trouble to explain my position on general data structures in the article I have linked previously. You can't, in general, really optimize general data structures for specialized use-cases. That's why they are called general!

You wouldn't use a map where you could use a vector, right? But a map would still do the trick, no?

If you start doing all that, you are then trying to fit logs through a meatgrinder. You then have bloat, inefficiency, and all that other good stuff. I mean, you see, this is exactly why we have so many problems right now: people trying to use a general solution for everything. But all those solutions aren't good enough for one reason: they can't specialize. And you can't make them so. (That's the whole point of the topic article, too, just applied to strings.) And they can't interoperate.

> even 99.99% of relevant cases of your domain

Currently, that's more like 50% and the rest is unattainable without access and the knowledge of structure. And the first 50% doesn't even work that well either. I list a few applications on the website, so, don't take this as a bunch of empty claims: those can't be done efficiently (or practically) via the general means.

> Normal editing today is: you press a key, something happens, that's all. Sometimes you add a modifier, but that's mostly it. Vim on the other side, you have modes, you have parameters for key presses, you compose commands to create new commands on the fly. That all is several steps more complex than just a simple key press. Vi-Input is a whole language in itself, highly complex on a cryptic level, all just to macro-manage micro-tasks.

It may be complex in comparison to notepad, sure, but, I mean I haven't seen what's so cryptic about it, not really.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#74
I'm not an emacs power user. I use emacs solely.

Compared to me the author feels like a power user of emacs (or was one) and is making broad arguments against the existence of people like me: not power users.

I've never run into these issues they talk about and I don't really know elisp.

Mostly, over vim, I just like chord editors more than modal editors. If a more modern terminal-based chord editor came out I'd try it.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#75
post #68

Hi! I am the author. I will be glad to answer any questions. First of all, I don't want another Emacs rewrite, much less in Guile. Mixing languages is not good for power-use, which requires ease-of-use, or at least conceptual simplicity. I talk more about it in the article in the Project's Philosophy/Homogeneity section in [1] The Power of Structure. I am proposing we need to really start considering a different para…

I an curious about the CL part. Can you elaborate why the REPL input and output should be in different buffers?

In fact, I think every output should have its own buffer (or a place to end up in).

On the one hand, this is a UI problem, so that's just how I would prefer it. When you have a lot of output (like thousands of lines in a batch), you really don't want to go looking for where that thing begins.

On the other hand, you can't easily access the latest execution run programmatically. So, then, the input part shouldn't be there as well.

That doesn't mean you couldn't select a run of input-output dialogue, though. Visually, the run of UI input-outputs could be the same, it's just that how you work with all that stuff that has to be structured.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#76
post #71

Hi! I am the author. I will be glad to answer any questions. First of all, I don't want another Emacs rewrite, much less in Guile. Mixing languages is not good for power-use, which requires ease-of-use, or at least conceptual simplicity. I talk more about it in the article in the Project's Philosophy/Homogeneity section in [1] The Power of Structure. I am proposing we need to really start considering a different para…

I find most of your complaints incomprehensible. > Well, alright, I don't see no CSV-mode to arrange everything into a pretty table and then let me filter/sort/edit the damn thing. `csv-mode` is right there on ELPA, the default package source for Emacs. You went to MELPA, which only has packages from people who don’t want to license their code the same way as Emacs. Install `csv-mode`, then type `C-c C-a` to format i…

> `csv-mode` is right there on ELPA

Didn't know about that one. Jesus, Elpa, really? Not that it changes anything.

>> A table editor within emacs will be janky > This is completely wrong. There are half a dozen Emacs packages that give you variations on the theme of a table, and none of them are slow or janky in my experience.

Haha, have you used org-made lately? Have you tried formatting a large table? Is it fast, you think?

Look, make a 100colx100000row table that you can edit (although, something like 10 by 20 will do the trick too). Not just view, but edit. It's not a question of whether it will be janky, it's a question how long you have to wait before exiting the damn thing in a furious fit of anger. That's just what you get with plain-text, plain and simple. I don't see how this is even an argument.

And then, why do you think it is that there are half-a-dozen packages there for it anyway? Is it, perhaps, because no one of them really does the job?

> This one is actually caused by your clipboard manager rather than an Emacs package.

I take a rant license on that one.

> Etc.

But, you see, that's the problem: these problems don't end.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#77

Hi! I am the author. I will be glad to answer any questions. First of all, I don't want another Emacs rewrite, much less in Guile. Mixing languages is not good for power-use, which requires ease-of-use, or at least conceptual simplicity. I talk more about it in the article in the Project's Philosophy/Homogeneity section in [1] The Power of Structure. I am proposing we need to really start considering a different para…

Basically, when you say 'structural editing', do you mean making a a parse tree for every kind of input and having a modal command language that permits traversal and editing of that parse tree. Like what sapling https://github.com/kneasle/sapling is attempting to do ?

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#78
I've found the emacs rant itself amusing, since it is a very old piece (slightly younger than me) and gargantuan piece of software, and it shows. On the other side, it is still the most extensible and moddable editor out there and its crown juwels (org, magit) are unmatched.

As for the project itself, I remain sceptical. Partly because I do not see how it would be more amazing for general text-editing tasks than emacs/vim + tree-sitter, partly because it is written by an adept of a language which is since decades more known for rants about programming than for delivering amazing software for end-users.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find most of your complaints incomprehensible. > Well, alright, I don't see no CSV-mode to arrange everything into a pretty table and then let me filter/sort/edit the damn thing. `csv-mode` is right there on ELPA, the default package source for Emacs. You went to MELPA, which only has packages from people who don’t want to license their code the same way as Emacs. Install `csv-mode`, then type `C-c C-a` to format i…

> `csv-mode` is right there on ELPA Didn't know about that one. Jesus, Elpa, really? Not that it changes anything. >> A table editor within emacs will be janky > This is completely wrong. There are half a dozen Emacs packages that give you variations on the theme of a table, and none of them are slow or janky in my experience. Haha, have you used org-made lately? Have you tried formatting a large table? Is it fast, y…

I’ve used various large `org-mode` tables with great success and no rage, but a table that large means that you need a database, not a spreadsheet. Use sqlite for it instead and you will be much happier. Use the right tool for the job; nobody is forcing you to use Emacs for every single thing.

I find that whenever people complain that Emacs is slow or janky, it is usually because they have configured too much stuff to run all of the time. They got excited by the possibilities and downloaded every single shiny package they could find. After a few years of downloading shiny packages Emacs just isn’t fast any more, and so they blame Emacs.

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