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Emacs Is Not Enough

project-mage.org

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Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#121

Post by some-mthfka »

tmtvl wrote: post #120
some-mthfka wrote: post #40

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…

Do you think managing CL packages in a way similar to 1968's Grail ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cq8S3jzJiQ ) could work? I'm thinking of a visual overview of packages were a user can connect packages together (maybe by drawing lines or by holding a key down and clicking on packages to link them), and can afterwards click on the vertices connecting the nodes to configure which symbols get imported. It might be a…

Man, I love these old demos. And I haven't seen this one before. I now understand much better what Alan Kay meant when he said: I felt like sticking my hands right through the display and actually touching the information structures directly. This is the first system I have used, and practically the only one since that I would call truly intimate. [1] Thanks for this link.

Well, in terms of UI, I see no problem whatsoever in building such a workflow. The way it will work is: lenses (aka editors) are cells (aka widgets). So you will be able to position things freely, anywhere. You could even connect and see actual symbols get imported and such.

As for the CL side, unimporting a symbol (aka removing a connection) is possible, so I see no problem there either : )

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhVQ1UG6aM

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#122

Post by narag »

scruple wrote: post #108
narag wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just, can't imagine what benefit you get from opening an X gigabyte file. Maybe I don't fully understand the context, but... why shouldn't you open a big file? I haven't read the whole article, but I did read that the author complains that a 172 kb text file makes the editor slow. It seems that the syntax highlighting is the culprit. I have a similar problem with my current editor of choice. I used to have a "raw"…

Where's the pragmatism? I personally don't open GB size files (that's not true, I sometimes do but it depends on the format and I tend to use vim (which is a very minimal configuration on my system these days, since I've moved to Emacs) for them because I'm typically already in a terminal munging the thing anyway). I prefer to use the terminal to deal with these things because those tools can help me decompose the pr…

I believe the author of the article is criticizing Emacs for being a jack-of-all-trades that use neither the best approach for plain text (keep it simple, Syd) nor the best approach for code that I swear it's structured editing, after some time working in a system very similar to what some-mthfka describes in a sibling comment.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#123

Post by scruple »

narag wrote: post #122
scruple wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the pragmatism? I personally don't open GB size files (that's not true, I sometimes do but it depends on the format and I tend to use vim (which is a very minimal configuration on my system these days, since I've moved to Emacs) for them because I'm typically already in a terminal munging the thing anyway). I prefer to use the terminal to deal with these things because those tools can help me decompose the pr…

I believe the author of the article is criticizing Emacs for being a jack-of-all-trades that use neither the best approach for plain text (keep it simple, Syd) nor the best approach for code that I swear it's structured editing, after some time working in a system very similar to what some-mthfka describes in a sibling comment.

It's not Emacs fault that CSV is a garbage format. Anyone who has spent time dealing with CSV understands the hell that is lurking in it's shadows. I don't think the rants solution, though I did not finish reading it because I frankly got bored, is going to fix any of this, either.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#124

Post by narag »

some-mthfka wrote: post #111
narag wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just, can't imagine what benefit you get from opening an X gigabyte file. Maybe I don't fully understand the context, but... why shouldn't you open a big file? I haven't read the whole article, but I did read that the author complains that a 172 kb text file makes the editor slow. It seems that the syntax highlighting is the culprit. I have a similar problem with my current editor of choice. I used to have a "raw"…

> It seems that the syntax highlighting is the culprit. In that case, it was the fact that adding a bullet point to a list would rescan the whole list (so it could simply update a bullet count in the header). You would need to implement incremental parsing for that, and that's not very easy. And certainly not natural. > If I understood the author correctly, he's saying that structured editors are superior to a syntax…

I had not realized that you wrote the fine article. As I told scruple in a sibling comment, I've been working in a pretty similar system for... some time :)

So I have some reading to do about that Mage Project...

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#125

Post by dsm9000 »

narag wrote: post #107
taeric wrote: post #11

I can't but reflect back on another post I made today, which is that everything fails at scale. Literally everything. They just fail in different ways and made different tradeoffs along the way. For example, this is why I find myself using "print" debugging on a process of 10^4 values. It is fun to think that, "maybe I can step debug this" on that many values, but... that is well beyond my capability to keep it in my…

I just, can't imagine what benefit you get from opening an X gigabyte file. Maybe I don't fully understand the context, but... why shouldn't you open a big file? I haven't read the whole article, but I did read that the author complains that a 172 kb text file makes the editor slow. It seems that the syntax highlighting is the culprit. I have a similar problem with my current editor of choice. I used to have a "raw"…

I’ve used emacs to open and edit binaries back in the old days - basically one long line. We often needed to install proprietary software in non standard locations so changing the embedded strings within binaries worked great and better than using vi (pre vim era). Always best if the new path had a length less than that of the existing one.

In any event I guess the whining about editors will never stop but meanwhile they seem to be GoodEnough(tm) for me and most things.

Emacs used to be mocked for being bigger than the OS but now I think most editors are much larger. I used to work at a University lab helpdesk of sorts where first time users of UNIX systems would ask us for help getting started entering their first CSCI programs on a Sun or other UNIX-like os and my unscientific but high n observation is that vi, emacs, ed or cat all worked and occasionally people would find a way to get confused equally on any method when starting out. Level of education didn’t seem to make a difference.

Editor ergonomics seem to be very personal, like furniture so I’m glad we have so many options.

On another side note I am glad that most text input fields across many operating systems and applications usually do the right thing with Emacs cursor control sequences e.g. CTRL-a, CTRL-n, CTRL-p, CTRL-e. So hopefully that legacy lives on

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#126

Post by some-mthfka »

narag wrote: post #124
some-mthfka wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems that the syntax highlighting is the culprit. In that case, it was the fact that adding a bullet point to a list would rescan the whole list (so it could simply update a bullet count in the header). You would need to implement incremental parsing for that, and that's not very easy. And certainly not natural. > If I understood the author correctly, he's saying that structured editors are superior to a syntax…

I had not realized that you wrote the fine article. As I told scruple in a sibling comment, I've been working in a pretty similar system for... some time :) So I have some reading to do about that Mage Project...

What kind of system was that, if I may ask?

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#127

Post by lycopodiopsida »

some-mthfka wrote: post #106
lycopodiopsida wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all, maybe you are just not a power user and don't have the same frame of reference that power users have. Maybe. Or maybe your ideal of an editor has nothing to do with what everyone else wants from it, including power users. > Text might be the king until then, yes, but so is C++ and the children running with AKs in Africa. Doesn't mean it's right or acceptable. I will ignore the "but the children" polemics…

Alright, I get it, you don't like CL. Coolio. > show me a better editor than emacs first I will. Just one correction: it's not going to be an editor. It's going to be many editors forming a cohesive whole. Rune: Rune Is Not an Editor . Other than that, what can I say? Yes, I have to prove my words, even though, in my opinion, the writings have enough to convince you that it can be done. And I will do my best to deliv…

I wish you to succeed, of course :)

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#128

Post by narag »

some-mthfka wrote: post #126
narag wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had not realized that you wrote the fine article. As I told scruple in a sibling comment, I've been working in a pretty similar system for... some time :) So I have some reading to do about that Mage Project...

What kind of system was that, if I may ask?

I'll send you an email message later, to the address on the page.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#129

Post by some-mthfka »

lycopodiopsida wrote: post #127
some-mthfka wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I get it, you don't like CL. Coolio. > show me a better editor than emacs first I will. Just one correction: it's not going to be an editor. It's going to be many editors forming a cohesive whole. Rune: Rune Is Not an Editor . Other than that, what can I say? Yes, I have to prove my words, even though, in my opinion, the writings have enough to convince you that it can be done. And I will do my best to deliv…

I wish you to succeed, of course :)

Thank you : )
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