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Emacs, naked

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Re: Emacs, naked

#31

Post by fafner »

anuragramdasan wrote: post #11
terhechte wrote: post #2

Coming from Vim, when I switched to Emacs, I found the starting aesthetic experience more than lacking (or, ugly). It took me some time (and a helpful HN discussion) until I found good themes and good plugins to make it look aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes, at least, after all people's tastes differ). If somebody is looking for a nice Emacs theme and feels that the OP is a bit too minimal, have a look at my Emacs…

What line numbering plugin is this? Looks very similar to vim numbers. I've been trying to find something like that for emacs for a while now. All I found wasLinum mode, which clutters the UI and doesnt give relative line numbering.

Why do you want line numbers next to your code at all? Aren't they just visual clutter? The current line number is shown in the mode-line anyway.

Re: Emacs, naked

#32

Post by pivo »

mercurial wrote: post #25
terhechte wrote: post #2

Coming from Vim, when I switched to Emacs, I found the starting aesthetic experience more than lacking (or, ugly). It took me some time (and a helpful HN discussion) until I found good themes and good plugins to make it look aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes, at least, after all people's tastes differ). If somebody is looking for a nice Emacs theme and feels that the OP is a bit too minimal, have a look at my Emacs…

I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.

It's a lot better, and easier, in Emacs 24.3.x. Just run

   M-x customize-theme
And pick from a list of themes. New themes are installed via the new, built-in package manager:

   M-x package-list-packages

Re: Emacs, naked

#33

Post by aaronem »

mercurial wrote: post #25
terhechte wrote: post #2

Coming from Vim, when I switched to Emacs, I found the starting aesthetic experience more than lacking (or, ugly). It took me some time (and a helpful HN discussion) until I found good themes and good plugins to make it look aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes, at least, after all people's tastes differ). If somebody is looking for a nice Emacs theme and feels that the OP is a bit too minimal, have a look at my Emacs…

I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.

When, a few years ago, I really started to get serious about using Emacs, I spent three days or so going through the customization options for pretty much everything, or at least everything I could figure out at that time, and adjusting it to taste. Since then, I haven't had to touch it except for minor tweaks. Emacs is what they used to call "a moby frob"; some initial investment is required, and it took me three or four tries before I had the perseverance to stick with it, but the payoff has been handsome indeed.

As for slow starting, the best way to solve that is by running an Emacs server, and creating and killing client frames at need. You only pay the startup cost once that way, and all your editor instances share history, buffers, and everything else, which is sometimes handy, and doesn't get in your way otherwise.

Re: Emacs, naked

#34

Post by aaronem »

terhechte wrote: post #30
mercurial wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.

If you try my repo, have a look at the custom keys that I defined, that helps things a lot. Also, the one great feature about Emacs is MX (which I bound to CMD-. This opens the minibuffer where you can execute arbitrary EmacsLisp functions. Everything you do in Emacs (even arrow up, left or right) is bound to an Emacs function. So if you start out, and you want to do something, but you don't know the shortcut, just d…

An excellent point; having a command line in your editor is something whose value is hard to recognize until you've tried it, and hard to overstate once you're used to it.

It might, though, be worth using the typical Emacs nomenclature for key sequences, i.e. M-x where you use 'MX' and (assuming your Command key is bound to Meta, as is ordinary for OS X Emacs users) M-. where you use 'CMD-.' -- your choice of preferred nomenclature is of course up to you, but using the standard forms makes it easier for other users, particularly neophytes such as the one to whom your advice here is directed, to understand what you're describing and relate it to the Emacs manual and to whatever other resources they're using.

Re: Emacs, naked

#35

Post by yetanotherphd »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #28

If you reflect for a moment, obviously a minority of HN will be made alienated and uncomfortable by this sexualized humor. Do you really want this?

Well another minority might view strip teases as an act of empowerment and self expression, and be made alienated and uncomfortable by your sex-negative viewpoint. How would you balance the interests of these two minorities?

Re: Emacs, naked

#36

Post by swah »

taeric wrote: post #26
swah wrote: post #7

Ì wonder if some Emacs people intend to migrate to LightTable in a few years?

I am curious what the upside of doing so would be.

I'd like to see graphics inline, for example. Another one: in Emacs, to display inline docs, you either use the modeline, or a buffer, or a tooltip. It could be nicer... The amount of hackyness needed for adding something like a Markdown preview bothers me..

To me, LT could be Emacs with better rendering.

I really enjoyed learning Emacs, its a great design, like an open-world game. I want more apps to capture that.

Re: Emacs, naked

#37

Post by pivo »

bzg wrote: post #6
sdegutis wrote: post #3

I switched to Emacs a year and a half ago when I started using Clojure, and customized it heavily for the first few months. But I avoid customizing it any more. I'm never truly satisfied with what I end up with, and I hit too many frustrating walls trying to make it just right. One major problem for me is the plugin ecosystem. There's Melpa which is easy to use and has the most up-to-date packages, but they're built…

Actually, I'm also on the "less configuration, less trouble" side. That's why I like some minor mode to let me get rid of what I don't want to see, sometimes.

Agree with the less is more idea when it comes to configuration. An additional benefit to this is that it's more comfortable to use vanilla emacs when you need to work on hosts you don't typically use.

Re: Emacs, naked

#38

Post by aaronem »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #27

(shameless plug) Don't you want a nice Nyan Cat in that modeline in the sky? ;). http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/

(shameless plug)

And don't you want the current weather to go alongside your Nyan, thanks to an Emacs minor mode inspired by a Hacker News comment?

https://github.com/aaron-em/weatherline-mode.el

Re: Emacs, naked

#39

Post by dilap »

swah wrote: post #7

Ì wonder if some Emacs people intend to migrate to LightTable in a few years?

I thought it was a fair question. You're being downvoted by overly-sensitive emacs junkies :)

I know I'm keeping an eye on lighttable (I'm an emacs users since forevs) -- it's definitely the only modern editor that seems geared to possibly being a match for emacs in the flexibility and customizability departments.

But of course, historically, emacs just incorporates whatever's interesting in other editors and continues on, more powerful than ever.

It's the borg of editors.

Re: Emacs, naked

#40

Post by saulrh »

mercurial wrote: post #25
terhechte wrote: post #2

Coming from Vim, when I switched to Emacs, I found the starting aesthetic experience more than lacking (or, ugly). It took me some time (and a helpful HN discussion) until I found good themes and good plugins to make it look aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes, at least, after all people's tastes differ). If somebody is looking for a nice Emacs theme and feels that the OP is a bit too minimal, have a look at my Emacs…

I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.

Slow emacs startup isn't a problem thanks to the new emacs-server stuff. Running emacs with the "--daemon" flag will cause it to do initialization, fork into the background, and become persistent; now edit files using commands like "emacsclient $filename". Eamcsclient will connect to the daemonized emacs server and have it open $filename, bringing it forward either in an existing frame or (using the "-nw" or "-nc" flags) creating a convenient new frame to edit with. Not only does this give you the ability to get into emacs without going through init, the server will maintain all of your editing in the same process so you don't have to manage editor instances.
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