I hadn't tried Magit before now, but on the suggestion of this blog I'm giving it a look through. Looks good so far. I also enjoy the style the blog is using: anyone know what backend the author is using?
Mastering Emacs
31–40 of 102 posts
Re: Mastering Emacs
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Swap your CTRL and caps lock keys. It will make it a lot easier to use.
Nope, don't do that. Learn to proper touch-type instead. Use your palms to press the ctrl keys. See: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/swap_CapsLock_Ctrl.html . You can then use Ctrl+m instead of Enter at the command line, as well. Save both pinkies from the extra effort.
I've seen these arguments before, but find them very unconvincing. I've no idea how I'm supposed to comfortably press ctrl with my palm, the issues with 'now hotkeys are in bad places' are resolved by just not having capslock at all (although I don't actually have any difficulty pressing anything either way), and the pinky load/awkwardness just doesn't seem that important to me, I don't think the keyboard is particularly well calibrated to use the pinkys appropriately anyway.
I'm happy for some people to find these things important and type differently, but what is the evidence that it is actively wrong to bind caps-lock as ctrl?
Edit: There are a lot of good points in these pages and I appreciate that the author has made many customisations in pursuit of an ideal layout, and the principle of sharing load between hands equally is a good one. It's just that I'm quite unconvinced that having capslock act as ctrl is a terrible thing, especially compared to many other changes that can be made even on a normal keyboard layout.
Re: Mastering Emacs
#33I would personally recommend using vim bindings in emacs, as they are (in my opinion) easier to make sense of and more intuitive. However, I'm sure this book is a great resource for all the other stuff and it seems very well put-together.
Intuitiveness is subjective. Take cursor movement for example. I understand now h,j,k,l is a remnant from historic keyboards, but when I started learning vim, I couldn't fathom why 'h' moves a cursor to left and 'l' to the right, though I got used to it eventually. The emacs 'C-f' for forward and 'C-b' for backward were definitely more intuitive. Of course, depending on the mode, some emacs commands can be cryptic an…
hjkl is QWERTY-centric, and would be totally nonsensical to a user of a different keyboard layout, like Dvorak.
C-f, C-b are English-centric, and would be totally nonsensical to a user of a different language.
Intuitive is hard.
Re: Mastering Emacs
#34An older but still interesting book, just in case: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-GNU-Emacs-Extensions-Glickstei...
Re: Mastering Emacs
#35I haven't read this, but from the contents it seems like you can learn everything there is in the book from the official Emacs GNU documentation: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/in...
I don't know if buying a book is worth it compared to the manual/documentation. But nonetheless, Emacs is a very self-documented program.
Re: Mastering Emacs
#36An older but still interesting book, just in case: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-GNU-Emacs-Extensions-Glickstei...
I bought it when it first came out, and it is still on my bookshelf. A decent book, as the Amazon reviews indicate, but not outstanding.He does cover a lot of ground, introducing emacs programming (and Lisp, in general). I did not find the "Comprehensive Example" chapter implementing a crossword puzzle mode as particularly helpful.
Everyone feels like other people do better negotiating car prices, and I feel the same way about "knowing" emacs. I have used it every day for over twenty years and people are still telling me "there are easier ways to do that in emacs."
Re: Mastering Emacs
#37An older but still interesting book, just in case: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-GNU-Emacs-Extensions-Glickstei...
I bought it when it first came out, and it is still on my bookshelf. A decent book, as the Amazon reviews indicate, but not outstanding.He does cover a lot of ground, introducing emacs programming (and Lisp, in general). I did not find the "Comprehensive Example" chapter implementing a crossword puzzle mode as particularly helpful. Everyone feels like other people do better negotiating car prices, and I feel the same…
Anything that large will have blind spot for a user. Even commiters might be surprised by some kind of idiom in elisp or in a particular mode. That syndrom can be found in languages. It would be of great value to document this side of things. Some spectrum of learning, showing how everybody travels through and that most people go through the same stages. Maybe how to not waste time or feel frustrated by that process.
ps: emacs should have 'didntknowthat...' as subtitle.
Re: Mastering Emacs
#38If you're on OSX and want a good Emacs, go to https://github.com/railwaycat/emacs-mac-port and read the installation instructions under the Homebrew section. It follows the official Emacs repo pretty closely, but has useful OSX additions (smooth scrolling, gesture support [font size e.g] and more).
Re: Mastering Emacs
#39I really like this blog, it's great. Very engaging. Would recommend subscribing to it! ps thanks for the downvote HN - classy :-)
I didn't downvote your post, but I can see why others might feel that it doesn't contribute to the conversation because basically the only possible responses are "Me too" and "You are wrong". Adding the complaint about the downvote would ordinarily get a downvote from me, but I'd already used my vote in search of justice. Anyway, consider the downvotes editorial feedback and perhaps taking advantage of the opportunit…
My post is about what a great blog it is. I'm fine with my original mark. If anyone wants to remove computer points from me please fire away.
Re: Mastering Emacs
#40I hadn't tried Magit before now, but on the suggestion of this blog I'm giving it a look through. Looks good so far. I also enjoy the style the blog is using: anyone know what backend the author is using?
One thing I hated about magit was that I couldn't stage multiple files with a region or similar. I'm currently on my phone for the rest of the evening so I won't have chance to check - if you notice this has arrived in your testing, do let me know!
I usually use shell emulator + company for dir/file autocomplete. This is the fastest I've got to staging individuals files or dirs, especially with projects that have a dir depth bigger than 1.