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Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

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Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#31

Post by tazjin »

liyanage wrote: post #18

I tried to get into Emacs on OS X a few times, but one of the things I don't like is the awkwardness of not having the Meta key mapped to a direct simple key press. Activating the "Use option as meta key" isn't a good solution because I sometimes need to type accented characters that require the option key. How do people deal with this when using Emacs in the OS X Terminal app?

iTerm supports using just one option key as meta. But in general I prefer using a build of emacs with Cocoa support enabled (you can get them at http://emacsformacosx.com/)

That lets you set up things like you want with M-x customize-group ns

I'm using CMD as meta there and CTRL as control, option stays option.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#32

Post by blueblob »

tazjin wrote: post #27
blueblob wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 so funny, vanilla=cocoa...

I don't understand your reply. It is quite possible that somebody doesn't know that the Cocoa wrapper is a part of upstream emacs, which is why I asked.

I meant that I found it humorous that Cocoa (chocolate) was being described as "vanilla" on the platform. Purely language, not anything to do with the wrapper.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#33

Post by cpr »

liyanage wrote: post #18

I tried to get into Emacs on OS X a few times, but one of the things I don't like is the awkwardness of not having the Meta key mapped to a direct simple key press. Activating the "Use option as meta key" isn't a good solution because I sometimes need to type accented characters that require the option key. How do people deal with this when using Emacs in the OS X Terminal app?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=typing+special+characters+into+emacs ;-)

I've used Option as Meta for years (been using Emacs since (gulp) 1977 on ITS/TOPS-20) and never had any trouble. You can use the M-x insert-char (M-x ucs-insert) and type in the code point or Unicode name of any character.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#35

Post by parbo »

liyanage wrote: post #18

I tried to get into Emacs on OS X a few times, but one of the things I don't like is the awkwardness of not having the Meta key mapped to a direct simple key press. Activating the "Use option as meta key" isn't a good solution because I sometimes need to type accented characters that require the option key. How do people deal with this when using Emacs in the OS X Terminal app?

I use cmd for meta, there is an option for that:

    (setq mac-option-modifier nil
          mac-command-modifier 'meta)

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#36

Post by pivo »

burgerz wrote: post #22
RBerenguel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs also binds almost any REPL (Python, Lisp dialects, Erlang...) There's also AucTeX if you need to write TeX (the best thing for LaTeX out there.) Emacs is also completely configurable with emacs lisp: you can write your own "things." For example, I have a mode I used to format posts for my blog: with just a few custom keybindings I had it formatted to my tastes and special CSS rules. PS: Also, leaving the keyboa…

You can replicate a lot of that behavior in Sublime, plus you get a full GUI, file browser tree and it's easy to use and customize right away. I'm not really convinced I should invest time in using emacs.

As a long time Emacs user a "Full GUI" or file browser tree are negatives. They just get in the way. There are alternative (and better) ways to navigate a file system that don't require pop-ups and other types of additional windows.

With Emacs directory navigation you can navigate into archive files such as .tar, .tgz and .zip without having to extract them.

Another Emacs benefit that Sublime may or may not support is that the editor's code can be customized simply by placing cursor at the function and typing a keystroke. Your code is then immediately active with no restarts or reloading.

Emacs works just as well in a OS window on my laptop and remotely running in a terminal. Being able to use the same editor locally and on a headless server is huge if you do server work at all.

You can run bash (or whatever) shells in emacs buffers. The full benefit of this is hard to describe, but once you try this you'll probably use it all the time.

In the end, you'll probably never be convinced by people advocating for Emacs, the best thing to do if you're really interested is to give it an honest try for a non-trivial period of time. Emacs can take time to learn but I think the payback is well worth it.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#37

Post by RBerenguel »

pivo wrote: post #36
burgerz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can replicate a lot of that behavior in Sublime, plus you get a full GUI, file browser tree and it's easy to use and customize right away. I'm not really convinced I should invest time in using emacs.

As a long time Emacs user a "Full GUI" or file browser tree are negatives. They just get in the way. There are alternative (and better) ways to navigate a file system that don't require pop-ups and other types of additional windows. With Emacs directory navigation you can navigate into archive files such as .tar, .tgz and .zip without having to extract them. Another Emacs benefit that Sublime may or may not support i…

Completely agree with the payback. I'd never dream of going back to more IDE-like editors

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#38

Post by RBerenguel »

Matti wrote: post #26

Emacs-related things I have learned recently: * Sticky modifiers: I don't know why it took me so long for me to activate these. The difference between holding Ctrl while hitting another key or just hitting Ctrl once before the next key makes a huge difference for me. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/StickyModifiers * Got an old-styled Thinkpad keyboard with the trackpoint buttons below the spacebar? I mapped the left b…

I think you may also like key chord-mode: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#39

Post by liyanage »

cpr wrote: post #33
liyanage wrote: post #18

I tried to get into Emacs on OS X a few times, but one of the things I don't like is the awkwardness of not having the Meta key mapped to a direct simple key press. Activating the "Use option as meta key" isn't a good solution because I sometimes need to type accented characters that require the option key. How do people deal with this when using Emacs in the OS X Terminal app?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=typing+special+characters+into+emacs ;-) I've used Option as Meta for years (been using Emacs since (gulp) 1977 on ITS/TOPS-20) and never had any trouble. You can use the M-x insert-char (M-x ucs-insert) and type in the code point or Unicode name of any character.

I should have explained better: I want to type the accented characters the same way I type them into other OS X text fields, and not in a non-standard, emacs-specific way.

I want to hold down the option key and press another key to get the character I need. That's why using Terminal's all-or-nothing option of mapping option to meta doesn't work.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#40

Post by liyanage »

ultimoo wrote: post #21
liyanage wrote: post #18

I tried to get into Emacs on OS X a few times, but one of the things I don't like is the awkwardness of not having the Meta key mapped to a direct simple key press. Activating the "Use option as meta key" isn't a good solution because I sometimes need to type accented characters that require the option key. How do people deal with this when using Emacs in the OS X Terminal app?

I use the 'use option as meta' heavily and haven't till date needed to type accented chars. Maybe you can try to use only the left option as a meta and leave the right one for accented chars? Not sure whether the Terminal.app supports it, better chances of iTerm supporting it though.

Unfortunately the option-as-meta setting applies to both left and right option keys.
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