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Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

kristofferbalintona.me

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Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#121

Post by sasaf5 »

I have been using Emacs+git on termux on an Android phone for more than 5 years.

I don't even use a third party software-keyboard, I just use termux's special key bar. To set it up, add the following to ~/.termux/termux.properties

  extra-keys = [['TAB','CTRL','ALT','ESC','HOME','END','LEFT','UP','DOWN','RIGHT']]
This has been enough for using org mode in everyday life tasks, and I don't need to keep swapping keyboards.

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#122

Post by neutronicus »

IceDane wrote: post #35
rrix2 wrote: post #17

Specifically for org, and specifically for org-roam, it's pretty good, but not good enough. It's not as good as desktop emacs, and it's also somehow not as good as a 1st class android app. the fdroid build of emacs doesn't really work very well with my org-roam, so i use a termux build,,, well nix-on-droid+emacs-overlay... and it's fine, for capture and recall. but i'm not authoring a lot of text with it. a custom ex…

> don't listen to ~any emacs user's opinion I sort of came here to say the same thing. The intersection between (the set of people who care about good UX) and (the set of people who would try to use emacs on android) is the empty set. Emacs users' self-flagellation is pretty legendary, and I say this as an emacs user (though I've mostly given up on how janky and slow it is compared to modern editors and only use it f…

What do you mean by "modern editors"?

For me it is noticeably snappier than VSCode (which I am hassled by management to use for Copilot).

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#123

Post by sroerick »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #105
sroerick wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so I'm playing with OCAML a lot right now, and it seems like in this workflow I would lose access to all the IDE tooling that is provided. That's not the end of the world, but still a big workflow hit which is solved by just remote ssh into NVIM. I'm definitely curious about your workflow, though.

Curious how would you lose it? Do you mean the tooling you're using won't work across Tramp? You should ask in an emacs community for more detailed feedback on this if you're interested.

I'm pretty sure this is the case - as I think the OCAML LSP requires dune to be running in watch mode to provide full information

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#124

Post by sroerick »

entrox wrote: post #91
sroerick wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it handle things like project heirarchy? Does folder browsing work? Can I use an org-roam database? I've used TRAMP to open single files over SSH, but it seems less functional than mounting with FUSE. But I haven't looked into it extensively. I am definitely going to build out that bash script for the second use case, that sounds excellent. Thanks, I had no idea you could do that

Yes, it works basically everywhere you'd interact with a local file or directory. For example, you open a remote dired buffer with C-x C-f /ssh:host:/dir/. Afterwards, opening a file or navigating to a directory will open it remotely as well. You can also use project functions or magit seamlessly. I have plenty of bookmarks remotely etc. Fundamentally, you just prepend "/ssh:[user@]host:" to any path or file operatio…

Awesome

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#125

Post by sroerick »

spit2wind wrote: post #98
sroerick wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just haven't found Emacs to be particularly productive over SSH. IMO it works best on a local machine, there's just too much in the GUI which isn't as workable over terminal. Font rendering, images, clickable text links all take a hit. None are really deal breakers, but Emacs TUI just kind of feels like an afterthought. X11 over SSH doesn't feel responsive to me. Its almost more of an aesthetic choice really, its j…

> but Emacs TUI just kind of feels like an afterthought This reads as a testament to how far the Emacs GUI has progressed!

Yes, it's actually so good

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#126

Post by sroerick »

anamax wrote: post #120
sroerick wrote: post #13

I'm a little embarrassed by my current workflow, which is: A. Emacs and org mode on my laptop B. Neovim to do development via SSH on my dedicated Hetzner box, because my laptop is too potato for dev C. A bash script to push up any random notes I have up to the server I have used sshfs, syncthing and unison in the past, but never quite got the workflow for either to click. After about 13 years of trying I still am not…

Does your bash script use rsync or does it duplicate some of rsync's functionality? (rsync also uses zip to speed things up.)

It literally just takes a string, formats it as an org entry, and then appends it to an 'incoming.org' file on my remote.

Then I can access the incoming.org file and org-refile entries at will.

Usage is just 'note "note text"'. this is generally how I process notes in org - I collect things in an inbox and them I elaborate on them, then refile them into a fully fledged note or the appropriate context.

Its dead simple, but comfy for my workflows and solves the problem of "collecting notes from mobile" without trying to struggle session mobile Emacs or Org mode

Re: Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good

#127

Post by trelane »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95
IceDane wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't bother me Right, so what you're really saying is that you are totally fine with your editor being unresponsive and janky during regular editing workflow, working with modern tooling, and that everyone else is just wrong for not feeling the same way. You do you. I lived with the same copium excuse for years, obviously, but I've moved past that now and into the year 20xx. I love emacs and truly wish that I…

Modern tooling part one: tried using an LSP with emacs (35+ year user) ... gave up after 3 days, it provided absolutely nothing to my workflow. Modern tooling part two: via M-x grep (bound to F1) use ag(1) or rg(1) instead of grep to explore my codebase, runs async and finishes more or less before my "emacs pinkie" is ready to touch another key.

I've been getting into AI in emacs. ellama and especially minuet can be a big help.
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