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Use GNU Emacs

www2.lib.uchicago.edu

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Re: Use GNU Emacs

#191

Post by ParetoOptimal »

cfiggers wrote: post #146

AutoHotkey enables Emacs-like extensibility at the OS level rather than the application level. Some of my macros and shortcuts apply in every text field I interact with , even this comment field on Hacker News. Whether I'm editing in VS Code or vim or Microsoft freakin' Notepad, my macros travel with me. I like that a lot better than being locked into any specific editor and unable to get comfortable outside of it.

> AutoHotkey enables Emacs-like extensibility at the OS level rather than the application level.

emacs is my OS though :)

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#192

Post by anthk »

rahen wrote: post #81
uhtred wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the vinyl or paper books comparison. I have a strange nostalgia for the old Unix days that I was too young— perhaps not even alive yet— to experience the first time around. It's what draws me to learning and using things like vim, Perl, awk, sed, etc. Those tools feel arcane and mystical.

I've been there too. Installing, trying, running older and older Unixes in SIMH. 4.1BSD, 32V, V7, V6, all the way down to V0 on the PDP-7 with the help of tutorials on gunkies.org. I still keep a neatly organized folder of primitive Unix systems with their (tiny) disk images and SIMH boot scripts. But going all the way back to the Big Bang at V0, a funny thing happened. The essence was still missing. Because indeed t…

GUIX as the OS it's the ultimate GNU system witht he spirit of ITS+Emacs.

Not everything open and insecure, but hackable up to the last bit.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#194

Post by teddyh »

ubermonkey wrote: post #182
teddyh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name any other comparable IDE or editor which is also free software (and also preferrably developed by more than a single company).

Most people don't care about that as a qualification.

I would assume that many people here do some work on free software. If people producing free software are not able to comfortably develop free software using only free software, then we have lost something important.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#195

Post by ParetoOptimal »

abdellah123 wrote: post #161
zelphirkalt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to combine note taking for future self, learning, coding, and org-mode, I recommend another rabbithole: Literate Programming in org-mode. The features supported are very comprehensive.

yeah, I'm there as well ^^' org-babel is quite powerful, although async support is limited (at least I couldn't figure it out)

try ob-async

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#196

Post by ParetoOptimal »

lmedinas wrote: post #36

I love Emacs. I did a ton of things with it: - Organizer - git client - search tool - rough notes - Terminal - file management - Code editor! Pretty much everything. But sometime ago I realized I was adding so many customized code lines to my .emacs to reassemble the modern editors that it made me think I was using it wrong. Then I decided to take a break and start using Neovim, which imo borrows some nice stuff from…

> adding so many customized code lines to my .emacs to reassemble the modern editors

I feel like trying to recreate vscode in emacs could be a suboptimal approach to say "add a directory sidebar and lsp-mode, but get used to emacs buffer and tab handling"

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#197

Post by ParetoOptimal »

eequah9L wrote: post #84
dnh44 wrote: post #59

If you haven’t yet developed your emacs muscle memory I would suggest remapping your keyboard to swap the left-control and caps-lock keys. Your pinky will thank you. In macOS you can do this by going to Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts->Modifier Keys.

If you haven’t yet developed your Emacs muscle memory, consider taking a look at Evil. I switched about 7 years ago after well over a decade of using the default Emacs text editor. It was the right move. VIM IMHO just is a better editor. Emacs is the better everything else, but thanks to Evil, you can both eat this cake and have it, too. For me, a good stepping stone to Evil was God mode. It strips away the need to m…

Be aware of evil-collection or be ready to design vim keybindings for some modes

There is also the emacs keybind friendly modal solution meow.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#198

Post by dmitriid »

oblio wrote: post #133
quanticle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro language built in to the editor, and we're in 2023. Those kinds of editors are a dime a dozen :-) Are they? Multi-cursors, sure, but what other editors have a macro language that combines the power and accessbility of emacs lisp? The only other one that comes close is vim, and, as many critiques as I have of emacs lisp,…

There are many text editors extensible in Lua or in Python. They generally don't allow messing with the innards as much (Firefox proved that's a double edge sword with its extension, it's not an unalloyed good). https://micro-editor.github.io/index.html https://lite-xl.com https://neovim.io https://code.visualstudio.com http://www.sublimetext.com And Emacs Lisp doesn't feel super accessible to most software developer…

> And Emacs Lisp doesn't feel super accessible to most software developers under 40.

Or over 40 (I'm 42) :)

> Almost all its conventions come from a small little island, it's like marsupials in Australia, their own little parallel evolution.

This is a great analogy. And people forget that to program any system effeciently you need to know that system. Not necessarily inside-out, but good enough. A brief look at any emacs config will show you just how many weird and inconsistent things you have to contend with: major modes, minor modes, hooks, global variables, global functions, mode-specific global functions, special lists, non-special lists, and a myriad API calls and functions in between.

Wikipedia says that emacs has 10 000 (ten thousand) built-in commands [1] That's probably on par with JVM :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#200

Post by oblio »

dmitriid wrote: post #198
oblio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many text editors extensible in Lua or in Python. They generally don't allow messing with the innards as much (Firefox proved that's a double edge sword with its extension, it's not an unalloyed good). https://micro-editor.github.io/index.html https://lite-xl.com https://neovim.io https://code.visualstudio.com http://www.sublimetext.com And Emacs Lisp doesn't feel super accessible to most software developer…

> And Emacs Lisp doesn't feel super accessible to most software developers under 40. Or over 40 (I'm 42) :) > Almost all its conventions come from a small little island, it's like marsupials in Australia, their own little parallel evolution. This is a great analogy. And people forget that to program any system effeciently you need to know that system. Not necessarily inside-out, but good enough. A brief look at any e…

The worst part for me is that I wanted a few "simple" UI tweaks with Emacs. I really wanted to use it.

But I wanted it to have a native tab bar and I wanted to move the command bar at the top, with dropdowns instead of "expand-ups" (turns out, I read right-to-left, top-down, not right-to-left, bottom-up. You can't have either of those, in the world's most extensible editor :-(

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