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Emacs Is My New Window Manager

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11–20 of 166 posts

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#11
post #2

I'm a vim guy, but I've been wanting to try emacs for a long time. Any tip for a convert like me? Is the "trick" just to make the jump and persist until it clicks? How do I still get my job done in the mean time?

If you just want to manage multiple tiled command-line windows, just try vim+tmux (getting session management on top of it).

There was at least another tiled window manager able to embed GUI windows.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#12
post #5
post #2

I'm a vim guy, but I've been wanting to try emacs for a long time. Any tip for a convert like me? Is the "trick" just to make the jump and persist until it clicks? How do I still get my job done in the mean time?

I'm the same as you. I am Windows/Mac user and I spent a bit of time trying to configure emacs across all my machines. I think it's fair to say that it wasn't designed to be configured cross platform, which is a shame. When I can be bothered I will have to create .emacs files for each platform that I use

I disagree. I have been using the same init.el across Windows and Mac for several years. Hardly anything needs to be tailored but you can inspect the system-type variable if it is really necessary.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#13
Interesting idea. I would just use something like DWM, a lightweight tiling window manager. You still get the simplicity but with a bit more flexibility. Most people will probably quickly hit a deal breaker with just using Emacs as a WM.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#14
post #2

I'm a vim guy, but I've been wanting to try emacs for a long time. Any tip for a convert like me? Is the "trick" just to make the jump and persist until it clicks? How do I still get my job done in the mean time?

You can try Evil Mode. => http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil

Alternative: go full-on emacs, without evil. I think you need to do that, at least at first, to really learn emacs.

How to still get your work done: continue to use vim for your "work," and at first just use emacs to learn emacs. As soon as practical, start using emacs to do just one thing from your work. Somewhere soon after this you'll be comfortable enough to do everything from emacs (although still not an expert), and then you'll be able to decide to stick with it or go back.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#15
My impression has been that emacs is a poor window manager. Granted, I am not incredibly skilled with emacs but even after some weeks I was still confused by the way emacs opened up new windows or changed existing windows when you've clicked on something (for instance, in dired or org-mode's agenda) I ended up to open everything in a new frame and left the management of these frames to awesomewm.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#16
post #3
post #2

I'm a vim guy, but I've been wanting to try emacs for a long time. Any tip for a convert like me? Is the "trick" just to make the jump and persist until it clicks? How do I still get my job done in the mean time?

Use emacs with evil mode.

Yes ! I highly recommand this plugin to those who are not familiar with the strange Emacs shortcuts ... but also to those who are not familiar with vim. evil-mode allows to learn Emacs and Vim at the same time, it's perfect for a beginner.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try Evil Mode. => http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil

Alternative: go full-on emacs, without evil. I think you need to do that, at least at first, to really learn emacs. How to still get your work done: continue to use vim for your "work," and at first just use emacs to learn emacs. As soon as practical, start using emacs to do just one thing from your work. Somewhere soon after this you'll be comfortable enough to do everything from emacs (although still not an expert)…

I started to learn Emacs with its native commands and shortcuts. But I switched to evil when I noticed than I was unable to memorize the shortcuts for some basic actions like "add a character to the end of each line". Today I use evil-mode for all tasks and to be honest I don't think I'm missing something. The Emacs shortcuts are not mandatory to benefit of the power of Emacs, which resides essentially into its modularity and plugins.

Re: Emacs Is My New Window Manager

#20
post #2

I'm a vim guy, but I've been wanting to try emacs for a long time. Any tip for a convert like me? Is the "trick" just to make the jump and persist until it clicks? How do I still get my job done in the mean time?

You might want to try https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs
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