Mg: an Emacs-like editor in 160 kb • Hacker News Board

Re: Mg: an Emacs-like editor in 160 kb

#81

Post by snoopybbt » Mon, Mar 23, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

Hey, OP's point on the topic:

I like GNU Emacs, and I run GNU Emacs most of the time.

I _do_ know how to use vi/vim and I'm quite pragmatic on the matter.

When I am doing server configurations, by the way, vi/vim start up way, way more quickly than GNU Emacs.

This is good, but as I use emacs most of the time, I end up in mixing keyboard shortcuts.

Thus, on my system, $EDITOR is /usr/bin/mg and /usr/bin/vi (vi, not vim) is a symlink to /usr/bin/mg.

So I get emacs keybindings and a fast-starting editor.

If i __do__ need syntax highlighting or anything, i run vim (not a symmlink) or the full GNU Emacs.

Put simply.

Re: Mg: an Emacs-like editor in 160 kb

#82

Post by SamReidHughes » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 2:15 AM UTC

Peaker wrote: post #62

SamReidHughes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when I'm on some tiny VM or computer and want something nicer than Nano that has something remotely close to Emacs keybindings. Then it's the keybindings, not the scriptability. I just want a reasonable editor.

It's a bit funny, the most unreasonable thing about emacs are its default key bindings... Some of the most frequent operations, like switching between buffers or windows takes 3 key strokes!

Instead of the usual 2 keystrokes, right?

It can take more keystrokes than that, even, if you have three or more windows.

Re: Mg: an Emacs-like editor in 160 kb

#83

Post by SamReidHughes » Tue, Mar 24, 2015, 10:57 AM UTC

aaronem wrote: post #79

lvillani wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sshfs is better In my experience it highly depends on the editor. With Sublime Text 3 on OS X, each keystroke is delayed by SSHFS' latency. It's a pain. Tramp transfers the files back and forth, always working on a local copy (if I remember correctly). It provides a better experience.

Tramp’s experience gets better when you configure Emacs to keep autosave files somewhere other than alongside their parent in the same directory - unlike the file you’re actually editing, which is indeed only transferred on save or revert, the autosave file is updated very frequently, and this can be painful over a slow link. Keeping autosave files under ~/.emacs.d/auto-save or similar solves that problem; if you can…

This is a good point about tramp.

Re: Mg: an Emacs-like editor in 160 kb

#84

Post by james2vegas » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 3:17 AM UTC

philsnow wrote: post #43

__david__ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point of Mg—it's not to replace Emacs as your development powerhouse, but to give you little binary that acts a lot like Emacs but runs in some tiny vm or embedded device somewhere. You can also cross compile it (which you cannot do to Emacs).

It sounds exactly like all the various attempts people have made over the years to make a vim-alike textarea editor in javascript. They always forget block select mode, or don't implement bookmarks quite right, or something, which ends up in frustration if you're used to using your editor of choice as more than a Notepad.exe-alike.

Lots of people use vi (which lacks block-select mode) as more than a Notepad.exe-alike without frustration