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What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

masteringemacs.org

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Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#191

Post by etra0 »

I remember seeing vim as a complex solution for text editing, and I didn't touched it for that same reason. A couple of years later I spent sometime learning it and now it's my day-to-day tool for writing code.

I feel the same with Emacs, I've been reading (very little) about it and I wonder if I dedicate the same time I did for learning vim I'd be in the Emacs bandwagon, but at the same time I don't feel that curious about it, because I feel happy with vim.

I've tried some versions with vim bindings but the problem remains the same, the energy to explore the rest just wasn't there.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#192

Post by bananamerica »

Hedepig wrote: post #186
qbasic_forever wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the LSP ecosystem is so much nicer than the machinations hacked into text editors over the last 20 years. When you get down to it a modern editor is just a process manager for language servers, a global event bus/RPC layer across them all, and a UI layer. Instead of reinventing bespoke versions of those things, just solidify it using standard protocols like JSON RPC, HTML for UI, etc.

I thought LSP was available for emacs?

It is.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#193

Post by agumonkey »

karencarits wrote: post #107
jonpalmisc wrote: post #93

I almost wish I never tried Emacs. Ignorance is bliss, and Emacs ruined all other text editors for me. There are absolutely areas that others do better, but the self-documenting “living program” nature is too much to give up; everything you ever need to know or do is a few keystrokes away.

How did you approach Emacs to make it such a valuable tool? I have tried to get started with Emacs a few times but the initial resistance has been too large

It's a bit of an extreme instance but when I toyed with good old turbo pascal 7.0 ide (dos era) I was shocked by the quality of it (turbo pascal), brilliant on every aspect, mind blowing for the size and era. Yet the minute I tried to edit code I felt straightjacketed by the editor, you can only do what's built in. It was a stupid need for region aware edition.. nothing fancy but I was still stuck.

Ability to extend your system with a quick `eval` and adjust keybindings when needed is a very hard drug to me. And I'm not in the fanatic period anymore but still.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#194

Post by chimprich »

karencarits wrote: post #107
jonpalmisc wrote: post #93

I almost wish I never tried Emacs. Ignorance is bliss, and Emacs ruined all other text editors for me. There are absolutely areas that others do better, but the self-documenting “living program” nature is too much to give up; everything you ever need to know or do is a few keystrokes away.

How did you approach Emacs to make it such a valuable tool? I have tried to get started with Emacs a few times but the initial resistance has been too large

I think the only way is to bite the bullet and accept the somewhat steep learning curve. Unlike the other suggestions I think it's best to start off with a vanilla Emacs setup (rather than one of the fancy distributions), because it's better to start with a very simple setup and then build on that.

The initial Emacs setup is very basic and quite ugly, but good for learning. Follow the built-in tutorial.

After learning the basics, create an init.el file, learn to use the use-package package, and start off trying out interesting packages to make your life better. I would suggest finding a good theme and giving helm a go to begin with.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#195

Post by bananamerica »

dv35z wrote: post #122

I’m interested in emacs / org-mode / org-roam. My goal is to have a local notes solution (replacing Obsidian, Apple Notes), and have the notes automatically published on the web as a crosslinked personal knowledge base. I have somewhat achieved this with Obsidian/markdown files + git + Hugo + Render. I write stuff. Check it into git. Push, and it deploys as a website. Feel pretty good about cobbling that together. Bu…

Org roam is pretty cool but with less features than actual roam. I had to force myself to use it but after that it's fine. The big disadvantage of all things Org is that unless you're doing very simple and using only defaults, there are no reasonable mobile workflows. You pretty much need a PC, or termux+keyboard for it to make any sense.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#196

Post by novocantico »

antiframe wrote: post #176
novocantico wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Emacs almost exclusively for half a decade and got pretty good at it. But I feel like VS Code is the natural evolution of all the great ideas of Emacs. So I use VS Code almost exclusively now.

I feel that VSCode is missing the number one critical feature of Emacs: the ability to inspect and change the program as it's running.

Sure you can. Open up your VS Code extension in a VS Code window and live-debug it. I'd bet the process is probably very similar when editing VS Code yourself, but the point of the extension system is that you usually shouldn't have to.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#197

Post by ljm »

gaze wrote: post #108
jonpalmisc wrote: post #93

I almost wish I never tried Emacs. Ignorance is bliss, and Emacs ruined all other text editors for me. There are absolutely areas that others do better, but the self-documenting “living program” nature is too much to give up; everything you ever need to know or do is a few keystrokes away.

I’ve been using emacs on and off for about 20 years and I don’t really get the fanaticism. Org mode and magit and all these things are cool. I like that you can hack it. But — to me it never stops feeling like an ongoing project when you try to live your entire life in it. I like it obviously otherwise I wouldn’t still be using it, but it will never exactly feel elegant to me. More like a good text editor and a hundr…

I don't have the fanaticism either but I always fall back to emacs because it can quite easily assimilate the advances made in other editors without requiring too major changes to emacs itself.

In fact, my config these days is basically vanilla emacs with some of the UI stripped away, the modus theme, and a few language-specific modes for syntax highlighting. I don't use evil or hydra or any such thing any more. The only thing I have a sticking point with is exec-path-from-shell messing with $PATH in my env because of how it works.

I guess the reason it works well for me is because I try not to write code, so I don't need a massive toolkit that helps me write code as efficiently as possible. No-code is bug-free code, maximise the work not done, etc.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#198

Post by ghosty141 »

jaster wrote: post #68
chrisfinazzo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is mouse-mouse enabled by default? Can the insertion point be moved by clicking in a particular location? As of recent versions of macOS, emacs isn't included by default. Last I tried, in terminal-mode emacs, the answer to the above questions seems to be no - with no reasonable explanation why this is the case. I'm more than willing to do everything else from the keyboard, but these are basic oversights that have yet…

emacs "gui" perfectly supports the mouse out of the box. For use in a terminal (after using both for some time, I find the gui version better tbh), see https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Te...

I personally think GUI mode is simply better. There is no real advantage to running emacs in a terminal imo.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#199

Post by howinteresting »

ilovecaching wrote: post #31
adlpz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that yours is necessarily the case, of course I don't know, but I feel like lots of people that hold opinions like yours greatly underestimate the amount of functionality that comes with something like a Jetbrains IDE. It's not even about the editor itself, nor the graphical or UX stuff. It's the crazy level of introspection and of understanding your code those IDEs bring. My daily experience is just i…

I have used Jetbrains IDEA and Clion extensively to understand the other side. An IDEs heavy introspection isn’t necessary, and perhaps actively harmful towards writing and reading code. It’s rigid policy over tools like git is certainly actively harmful. If it takes an IDE to write your code, then it will likely take an IDE to read your code. They are tools that allow you to take shortcuts were you shouldn’t, and ro…

I can write the same code significantly faster with an IDE because of all the autocompletion and code navigation. I don't use the version control features other than the occasional blame, preferring to stick to a command line for that.

Re: What’s new in Emacs 28.1?

#200

Post by _hl_ »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #157
novocantico wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Emacs almost exclusively for half a decade and got pretty good at it. But I feel like VS Code is the natural evolution of all the great ideas of Emacs. So I use VS Code almost exclusively now.

Yeah the LSP ecosystem is so much nicer than the machinations hacked into text editors over the last 20 years. When you get down to it a modern editor is just a process manager for language servers, a global event bus/RPC layer across them all, and a UI layer. Instead of reinventing bespoke versions of those things, just solidify it using standard protocols like JSON RPC, HTML for UI, etc.

Absolutely. Emacs is a great UX layer, only lacking a modern UI rendering layer. Would be nice to have emacs with a DOM-based rendering engine.
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