GNU Coughs Up Emacs 22 After Six Year Wait

lisah writes "After keeping users waiting for nearly six years, Emacs 22 has been released and includes a bunch of updates and some new modes as well. In addition to support for GTK+ and a graphical interface to the GNU Debugger, 'this release includes build support for Linux on AMD64, S/390, and Tensilica Xtensa machines, FreeBSD/Alpha, Cygwin, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9 with Carbon support. The Leim package is now part of GNU Emacs, so users will be able to get input support for Chinese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and other languages without downloading a separate package. New translations of the Emacs tutorial are also available in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Italian, French, and Russian.'"

Comments

Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares. We're all using VI now.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[TheRaven64]

I don't usually troll, but I couldn't resist tagging this article 'vi'. Let the flames commence.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[__aaclcg7560]

My programming instructor said he had an evil boss at a government job who made him use Emacs. Horrors! I think Emacs exist to scare the new generation into using VI.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Richard McBeef]

Nobody cares. We're all using VI now.

It's always fun watching some who has never used vi try to use it. Especially a fatty. The mashing of the keys trying to switch between modes! It's hilarious.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

You infidel pig dog.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[HTH NE1]

I've been using XEmacs 19.13 for the past 6 years at my workplace. It came out in 1995.

I don't expect this announcement to affect my work environment.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[buswolley]

Perhaps this should be tagged: flamewar!

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tagging doesnt seem to do much anymore. For a while now it seems like the editors have been choosing appropriate tags by themselves when a story is posted.

Which is probably better; I was getting tired of seeing "yes", "no" and "haha" tags, as well as "fud", "!fud" applied to every other story.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[bckrispi]

Emacs vs. vi?? They both suck!!

Re:Nobody Cares.

[joe_bruin]

Great, where can I download a boot disk?

Re:Nobody Cares.

[LiquidCoooled]

Granted, we should remove the known crap tags.
But I haven't seen any custom tags for a while now, its all very sanitised.
I expect to see "itsatrap" type things.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[smittyoneeach]

My son, the Esteemed Mother Among Computer Software smiles at you.
May the icon factories currently stuffing lesser programming tools with meaningless little objects of idolatry never pollute your conscious with bric-a-brac.
May you never touch an editor that is less than extensible, customizable, self-documenting, and resplendent, whether dressed in an X session or a humble terminal.
And may e vi l never your doorway darken, though emacs has a mode to help your recovery therefrom.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[smittyoneeach]

Well, if it's the same hardware you had six years ago, you might want to hold what you got.
However, in addition to tons of new functionality, the hackers seemed to have found time to make the old lady a bit more zippy. Go on: have a wee peek.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, we all got tired of RMS and switched to xemacs instead.
Xemacs, less zealotry, more updating.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Icon factories. That just made my day.

I keep bashing all this eclipseholics that call themselves coders. Icon factories is the BEST definition EVER for this stupid IDEs.

I barely get out of Emacs for anything ... i wish i could C-c b bathroom, that way i would really have no need to live my Emacs session ever.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Come on mods...

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Jarik_Tentsu]

Quite obviously Microsoft Word is the best. Vi and Emacs are for people who can't afford REAL software.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

May God bless and keep you, Emacs,
May you stay at twenty two,
May you always do for coders
what Eclipse will never do.
May you build our trees in c-mode
Until the terminal bell has rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your keys always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
With control, escape and shift.
May your macros' lisp be joyful,
May contributors be far flung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Nazlfrag]

I'm consistently surprised at how little this sentiment is expressed. I loathe them both, and never saw why anyone would have a religious devotion to either of them.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[nicklott]

Because they're all too busy wearing sandals and stroking their beards to take a look around..

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Sillygates]

make the move to VIM. You won't regret it :)

Re:Nobody Cares.

[mattcasters]

Dear Sir, I wish to complain on the strongest possible terms about the previous entry in this webpage!

Many of my best friends use Emacs and VI and not all of them wear sandles and not all of them are stroking their beards. (at least not all of the time)

Best regards,

Brigadier Sir Matt 'Soup Nazi' Casters (Mrs)

P.S. I never use Emacs myself unless forced to and then I claim I don't know the shortcut to insert text.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[perturbed1]

I, for one, welcome the Mac OS X support. - A proud Emacs user now for 11 years. (ie. not too long really!)

Re:Nobody Cares.

[dkf]

Emacs vs. vi?? They both suck!!

And what would you suggest instead? NEdit seems to be distinctly sub-emacs in features (though with different bindings) and Eclipse is massive (though good for a few things: notably Java and XSD/WSDL, all of which are impossibly officious without a fancy editor to help you out). Everyone knows that notepad is a terrible editor for real use, and ed is only for the real hard-core. (OK, I admit I like ed. But I wouldn't want to write code in it if at all possible, not these days.) If I've not mentioned what you think we should be using instead of vi or emacs, be prepared to say.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[smittyoneeach]

Nice Rod Stewart.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I wanted to try VI, but all I got was "command not found". Any suggestions?

Re:Nobody Cares.

[hswerdfe]

I keep bashing all this eclipseholics that call themselves coders. I use eclipse and I would call myself a programmer.
While I have programed with Emacs in the past, I now use IDE's All the time.
they are useful, they show me alternative views of my data structures, they correct my spelling mistakes, they warn me of errors before they happen. they make helpful suggestions. In short they make my job easier.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Goaway]

I'm pretty sure everybody but beardy unix-nerd Luddites use a text editor designed to actual modern interface standards, and not some dinosaur out of the seventies.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[xtracto]

I use something called Notepad++

It is quite friendly and does not beep-beep-beep-beep at me by incessantly when trying to edit a simple file... and it has quite a good number of plugins and you can record macros and so for...

Dont know why people like hurting themselves trying to learn all those :q!WW!qHH^H^Hlllkkkkjjjjj shortcuts ... the less time I spend "learning" this tools is more time I get to make what I like.

Of course I am not as l33t as those.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[ebh]

Ed? Ed??

Wimp.

$ export EDITOR=cat

Re:Nobody Cares.

[kraemate]

How dare you write this on Slashdot!? Emacs-Vi flamewars are all that we live for!

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Nimey]

Pussy. Use "copy con" to edit your files in MS-DOS. *That* is pain.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Eideewt]

Are you trying to argue with religion?

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

$ export PARENT=moron

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont know why people like hurting themselves trying to learn all those :q!WW!qHH^H^Hlllkkkkjjjjj shortcuts ... the less time I spend "learning" this tools is more time I get to make what I like.

That's vi. Emacs uses friendlier commands - for example, to spellcheck the comments and strings in your source code using the "ispell" program, you type M-x ispell-comments-and-strings (there's tab completion of commands, so you don't have to type all that out - or you can bind it to another shortcut key, or just select it from a menu).

Is notepad++'s spellchecker smart enough to just check comments and strings and ignore your variable names and so on? I'm guessing probably not. Well, that's just one reason why emacs is better.

Re:Nobody Cares.

[CptPicard]

I used to use Emacs at university, but for more intense programming, especially in Java, I prefer a full-blown IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans -- been Netbeans more and more recently as its webapp support is better integrated and I never really was satisfied at the quality of most Eclipse plugins. An IDE's code-completion, error-correction and refactoring support is just simply way too good to ignore if you're interested in your productivity as a programmer.

The rest of my editing happens using Kate, and all the little sysadmin things I do in nano... if I had to choose just one editor, it might still be Emacs, but why should I?

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Em Adespoton]

I'd suggest using vi/vim instead of pico/nano for sysadmin editing... pico and nano hard-wrap your text, which can really mess up config files. Of course, you COULD use EMACS, but then hey... you could use ed too....

Re:Nobody Cares.

[Corwn of Amber]

Yeah, right. I can punch cards for x86 code. Take THAT! :p

I can finally upgrade from Windows 2000

[thammoud]

Long wait.

NEW - DNF mode!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's gotta be an easter egg in there somewhere...

Re:NEW - DNF mode!

[__aaclcg7560]

Yeah. You enter /DNF and your code gets converted into spaghetti code that will take years to untangle. That's why you need good backups. Alas, the Emacs team didn't maintain good backups and the code got hosed when this command was tested. That's why it took six years. ;)

Re:NEW - DNF mode!

[dpilot]

And here I thought the /DNF Easter Egg was an embedded game of Duke Nukem Forever...

Whooooooooosshh

Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the unicode2 branch from emacs CVS, not this release. Hopefully emacs 23 won't take as long as emacs 22. 8-(

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Monkius]

I've been using earlier code on this branch, and indeed, with it, I find emacs incomparably more beautiful. I was hoping for this to be in emacs 22...

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[SilentTristero]

Just a note, Emacs22 has been antialiased on Windows for a long time now, as long as you enable cleartype.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[HeroreV]

The release builds of GNU Emacs don't support anti-aliased text?

I've never understood why Emacs (or Vi/Vim) got so much praise. Sometimes I think maybe I'm crazy and all the zealots are the ones who have it right, but this makes me feel pretty certain that I'm the one who hasn't lost it.

A text editor has got to be extremely shitty to not support anti-aliased text. That is absolutely completely insane. The more I learn about Emacs/Vi(m), the worse they sound.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[be-fan]

Emacs is a programmers editor. Most programmers don't like to stare at anti-aliased code. That said, I'm firmly in the anti-aliased camp, which is fine for me because the various Mac builds support anti-aliasing (I believe the Windows ports do as well).

Emacs is a really powerful tool once you get the hang of it. It has absolutely unparalleled support for chopping/dicing/splicing and otherwise throwing text around really fast without ever taking your hands of the keyboard. And Emacs has language-aware modes for a whole bunch of different languages.

I used to use vi when I was on linux, and it was an excellent tool. When I first got my Macs, I used TextMate, which was all the rage among Mac users. Somebody turned me on to Emacs not too long ago, and I haven't looked back. It's just very well-designed for working on large amounts of code, and scales way better than TextMate ever did (tabs become useless when you're working on dozens of files!).

That said, the learning curve for Emacs is *steep*. It's definitely a "hands off the mouse" kind of system. It took me a month and 2000 lines of code before I was really comfortable with it, and I still haven't tapped a fraction of its full power!

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Actually, REAL coders don't use Emacs under X. You run the console version, which is the real Emacs. Maybe Emacs inside an x-term, but not the shitty X version. alias emacs='emacs -nw'. There. Fixed.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Abcd1234]

IMHO, emacs + GNU screen (well, these days, emacs + vim... alas, all the chording with emacs gave me mild RSI) is *the* way to go. Hack away at some code, detach session, reattach when you're on the road or at home, etc, etc. It's especially fantastic if you find yourself dev'ing on remote machines frequently (in my case, Solaris boxes, primarily)... makes it easy to spawn new shells and switch between without having to fire up an additional xterm+ssh.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

My Acorn Archimedes had anti-aliased fonts back in 1987!

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Jugalator]

Emacs is a programmers editor. Most programmers don't like to stare at anti-aliased code.

???

It's much easier on my eyes, or do you not include "sub pixel rendering for LCD's" in the definition of "antialiasing"? :) I mean, it's not like I even *see* the antialiasing effects, it's more like a lack of jags in the monospaced font.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the subpixel rendering that makes it worthwhile, not the antialiasing. Subpixel rendering effectively increases horizontal resolution, sharpening letters. It's lumped together with antialiasing on linux because Xft does them both.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[cthulhu11]

I've seen 18 year old secretaries who can barely drive a car using emacs just fine. No mouse, no fancy stuff. Just a terminal.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. Subpixel rendering gives characters a sort of "rainbow halo" around them. I'll take plain old X11 bitmapped fonts instead.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[peterpi]

Ok, this is -1 Offtopic, but:

I run "the other editor" on a completely fresh debian system. It's running on X, inside whatever it is you get when you click "Terminal Emulator" (gnome-terminal?).

My question is: Is there a way to get everything in gnome to use subpixel text rendering for everything apart from the terminal?

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Eideewt]

Just pick a font without it. ProFont is a nice one.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Eideewt]

To get the font dialog you can right click on the terminal window and "Edit Current Profile..."

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[be-fan]

I'm not using Emacs under X. I'm using the Carbon port ;)

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[be-fan]

Beats me. It's just that almost every serious programmer I know prefers the sharp 1-pixel thick rendering of non-antialiased fonts. I personally think anti-aliasing is easier on the eyes too, but I'm young enough that I never did much coding on a system without AA.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[anomalous cohort]

Flame wars aside, emacs is for developers and vi is for system administrators. I realize that there are plenty of developers that swear by vi; however, I still believe that is the target audience for these two tools based on their respective feature sets.

Obviously, you can run emacs in a pure CLI environment. That is not, however, where emacs shines. It shines in a windowing GUI environment. If you are a systems administrator who just needs to ssh or telnet into a couple of dozen servers today, look at some log files and adjust a configuration file or two, then vi is definitely the way to go.

If you are a coder who wants an IDE capable of color syntax highlighting, statement completion, block related indentation adjustment and other development related features that are somewhat consistent in a heterogeneous programming language environment, then give emacs a serious look. Yes, the macro record/playback capability is very handy too.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Well using the console version is my favourite, however since I am developing python code using unicode and strings
with UTF8 encoding, where vim accepts unicode input perfectly I have been unable to directly input utf8 encoded text
in the text versions of emacs. I have also tried xemacs, emacs21, emacs -nw with no luck (enabling some kind of unicode mode
in xemacs).
Googling just added confusion to the problem. Anyone out there who can succesfully enter unicode encoded text in
your emacs (xterm version)?

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[CheShACat]

... and then the plumber knocked on the door and 45 seconds later they were getting it on to the sound of wah-wah guitar?

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[cthulhu11]

HUH? BTW, 22.1 does in fact *finally* compile and run on Solaris 10 x86.

Re:Anti-aliased / subpixel rendered fonts on linux

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

http://tclab.kaist.ac.kr/~otfried/Mule/

Hope that helps.

Available....

[Creepy Crawler]

Available NOW at a cheap introductory price of $199.99!

Remember kids, free software is a matter of freedom, not price.

Re:Available....

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. I think it was your condescending tone that really convinced me that your way is right.

Re:Available....

[Creepy Crawler]

Of course I'm right. What do you think I am? A condescending unix user?

Re:Available....

[shankarunni]

That page seems to be from *1994*!! Besides, it's OK to ask for "reasonable charges" for GNU software distribution. Especially if you're distributing a "Reel to reel Unix tar 9-track 1600 bpi". Whoa, I haven't seen one of those since 1989.

Re:Available....

[Y-Crate]

Subscriptions, 4 updates for one year: FSF's Subscription Service provides four new versions of the tape of your choice. It is offered only for tapes that change frequently (see "Tape Subscription Service"). Emacs $600

Hindsight really is 20/20.

Re:Available....

[butlerdi]

They have always done this for funding. They also say that the best way to get their software is from another individual free. But to order this to help fund them in a way that might get past accounting(other than a donation).

Don't forget

[SnowZero]

Release early, release often. Don't end up like Emacs.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Well spoken words.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean don't end up like Debian stable?

Re:Don't forget

[marcosdumay]

Yep... And Debian has just released another stable, just a bit more than a year after the last one... And the new emacs is released... What is up with all those things?!?!?! Will we have perl6 and hurd released now?!?!?!

The world is a crazy place.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Next thing you know, 3DRealms will announce a FPS engine written entirely in emacs lisp.

Re:Don't forget

[Svartormr]

...can Duke Nukem Forever be far behind...?

Re:Don't forget

[archeopterix]

Release early, release often. Don't end up like Emacs.

+3 Insightful? Is this a moderator meta-joke? C'mon people, early & often is for startups - apps that still lack features and are just gaining the userbase. It might be unconceivable, but some apps actually get past this stage.

Don't end up like Emacs? WTF? You mean don't end up with a large and loyal userbase? People buying books about your software? Naah, don't end up like that, better concentrate on releasing early & often.

Re:Don't forget

[Samah]

I heard the next version of vim comes with Duke Nukem Forever...

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, many people have started using the CVS version of emacs, or the W32 release.
So a big numbered release like this is not a particularly huge deal. All it really means
is that I will start using Emacs 23 CVS.

Phil

Re:Don't forget

[MrNiceguy_KS]

The real question is: When will the new version of emacs show up in Debian stable?

Re:Don't forget

[kwoff]

I guess you mean, don't end up a project that has been existence for several decades longer than most others?

Re:Don't forget

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Vim 7.1 was released on 2007-05-12

Re:Don't forget

[Samah]

Well... where's my DNF! :D

Coughs up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that certainly explains things...

Feature Rich

[king-manic]

Did they finally add the "write my code for me" command? It seems to be one of the few things emacs hasn't implemented. I suppose a "materialize a 5'4 asian Girl Friend" command would be useful too. I think we should push for that in the next revision.

Re:Feature Rich

[Mattintosh]

I suppose a "materialize a 5'4 asian Girl Friend" command would be useful too. I think we should push for that in the next revision.

Once that's implemented, the whole vi vs. Emacs thing is over.

Hot asian girlfriend FTW!

Re:Feature Rich

[badboy_tw2002]

But I...uh, Lo Pan...uh, my friend wanted a 5'4" Asian girl with GREEN eyes. Oh well. Another 6 years isn't so bad after a 3000 year wait. Also, if you have something in there that can kill a truck driver with a big, bad ass mullet and attitude to match, I'd also be much obliged.

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Two months ago I switched to TextMate from Emacs, and two weeks ago I aquired a 5'3 asian girl friend... coinsidence? I dont think so...

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

The "write my code for me" command would decide the argument in favor of emacs. The other feature.... decisively in favor of vi, because emacs users would no longer have any argument time left for vi users.

Re:Feature Rich

[larry bagina]

the hot asian girlfriend writes your code, silly.

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

if you have something in there that can kill a truck driver with a big, bad ass mullet and attitude to match, I'd also be much obliged.

My friend, there's only one thing with a bad ass mullet and attitude to match that is capable of killing a truck driver. What you need is called "Chuck Norris mode".

Re:Feature Rich

[ikeleib]

Did they finally add the "write my code for me" command? It seems to be one of the few things emacs hasn't implemented. I suppose a "materialize a 5'4 asian Girl Friend" command would be useful too. I think we should push for that in the next revision.

It's all in there, you just don't know the right modeline.

Re:Feature Rich

[ajanp]

On June 2nd, 2007 at 12:14:00PM, Emacs became self-aware...

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Short asian girlfriend, more like. 5'4" ?

Re:Feature Rich

[chris_mahan]

Be careful, my 5'4 Asian Girlfriend became my 5'4 asian wife (japanese) and now I have the half-asian 2year old kid that, maybe, someday, after much training, will write code for me.

3. Profit!

Re:Feature Rich

[BobNET]

I believe the intent is that the Hot Asian Girlfriend will write the code for the EMACS user. Unfortunately for said EMACS user, she uses Vi...

Re:Feature Rich

[Mattintosh]

Yes. She should "write" my "code".

Though I guess it could be considered a meatspace write operation to conceive offspring...

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

* Types command *

write emacs 23

ERROR

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose a "materialize a 5'4 asian Girl Friend" command would be useful too.

It's part of the web browsing functionality - online dating.

Re:Feature Rich

[MS-06FZ]

I suppose a "materialize a 5'4 asian Girl Friend" command would be useful too. I think we should push for that in the next revision.

Once that's implemented, the whole vi vs. Emacs thing is over.

Hot asian girlfriend FTW! Wait a minute, the specs didn't call for her to be hot... It just said 5'4" and Asian...

So we could be talking about a chunky girl with mosquito bites, and a mouth full of crooked teeth, a strict no-sex-before-marriage policy, and a really foul attitude... Like the kind that would be all screaming at you in Cantonese every night, unless you cater to her every whim, as uttered in broken, thickly-accented English - and then if you give her the boot she sneaks back into your place and steals or destroys all your stuff...

See? SEE? Now do you understand why it's important to clearly and thoroughly define the requirements of your software before coding begins?

Re:Feature Rich

[Pharmboy]

So we could be talking about a chunky girl with mosquito bites, and a mouth full of crooked teeth, a strict no-sex-before-marriage policy, and a really foul attitude...

But she would be open source, so you could change those features.

Re:Feature Rich

[daeg]

And any clothes would be user-removable under the protections of the GPLv3. No clothing tivoization for me, thanks.

Re:Feature Rich

[bladesjester]

[Egg Shen] You leave Jack Burton ALONE! [/Egg Shen]

I love that movie =]

Re:Feature Rich

[king-manic]

Wait a minute, the specs didn't call for her to be hot... It just said 5'4" and Asian...

So we could be talking about a chunky girl with mosquito bites, and a mouth full of crooked teeth, a strict no-sex-before-marriage policy, and a really foul attitude... Like the kind that would be all screaming at you in Cantonese every night, unless you cater to her every whim, as uttered in broken, thickly-accented English - and then if you give her the boot she sneaks back into your place and steals or destroys all your stuff...

See? SEE? Now do you understand why it's important to clearly and thoroughly define the requirements of your software before coding begins?

I prefer my personal impelmentation of "5'4 Asian Girl Friend v10.0". It's a great improvement over "5'3 blonde German Girl friend v9.5" who was actually an upgrade on "5'5 filipina stripper Girl Friend v6.9". I still fondly remember the one I started with "5'1 half filipina half chinese Girl friend v.5.0" however that implementation was not as asthetically pleaseing as the other three and came with "waiting for marriage" DRM but was more stable then two of the other three.

The current one ("5'4 Asian Girl Friend v10.0") is both stable, DRM free, include the "hot" feature and "sane" feature which some of the previous versions lacked. I was thinking of trying make the "threesome" feature but I might be pushing my luck :D

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

But she would be open source, so you could change those features.

I had a girlfriend with open sores once. It didn't work out.

Re:Feature Rich

[guabah]

The current one ("5'4 Asian Girl Friend v10.0") is both stable, DRM free, include the "hot" feature and "sane" feature which some of the previous versions lacked. I was thinking of trying make the "threesome" feature but I might be pushing my luck :D

You forgot to add the "loyal" feature. She's gonna run with the nearest jock she sees if you don't.

Re:Feature Rich

[glitch23]

The current one ("5'4 Asian Girl Friend v10.0") is both stable, DRM free, include the "hot" feature and "sane" feature which some of the previous versions lacked. I was thinking of trying make the "threesome" feature but I might be pushing my luck :D

So is the RTM (Ready to Mate) version of "5'4 Asian Girl Friend v10.0" available or is it still at RC2? I want to pre-order. By the way, does it use a plug-in architecture? I would like to also order the sybian plug-in if it is compatible (with the force feedback of course).

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is supposed to be your asian girl friend. That was the whole point of the MULE project.

Re:Feature Rich

[revengebomber]

I suppose a "materialize a 5'4 asian Girl Friend" command would be useful too. I think we should push for that in the next revision. TAKE THIS. AND THAT. AND ONE OF THESE.

Re:Feature Rich

[HappySmileMan]

// Once that's implemented, the whole vi vs. Emacs thing is over. Yeah... It's a tie, nerds with no social life will use emacs... Everyone else uses vi.

Re:Feature Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

An ass-mullet ?
Probably shouldn't have eaten that last burrito.

Re:Feature Rich

[ksheff]

both will probably be implemented by a wrapper around skeleton-insert. I've written some things that would be considered simple 'wizards' using it and if I can do it, there's probably even more advanced stuff available.

Re:Feature Rich

[ArmedGeek]

Wow. I've never had one with the "sane" feature.

Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vi users get by fine without needing a psychiatrist.

But does it run on linux?

[Tumbarumba]

Or even better, does it run linux?

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I will only use emacs when it supports eperanto.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you mean Esperanto, you can get started here: Emakso

Re:Well

[Jim Hall]

If you want an editor that supports Esperanto, then you should switch to FreeDOS EDLIN 2.10c, as Esperanto support was already added. :-)

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll only speak Esperanto when its speakers learn how to spell it.

Re:Well

[Michael Duggan]

I will only use emacs when it supports eperanto.

It's funny you should mention that. Not only does emacs have three separate Esperanto input methods (esperanto-postfix, esperanto-alt-postfix, esperanto-prefix), it also has an Esperanto tutorial built in. If you don't believe me, try typing `M-x set-language-environment RET Esperanto RET' in Emacs 22, and then running the tutorial `C-h t'.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "eperanto", not "Esperanto". Eperanto is the feeling of dread that accompanies accidental castration by misadventure.

Y'know...

[Colin Smith]

Some day it's going to achieve sentience... Don't say I didn't warn you.

Re:Y'know...

[chris_mahan]

Q: What do you mean emacs became an AI?
A: LISP

Re:Y'know...

[sl3xd]

Possibly, but vim seems to be moving towards sentience faster than emacs. It's got farther to go, but don't count that scrappy vi clone out in the race to sentience.

Re:Y'know...

[Malc]

M-x doctor
M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead

Try them...

Re:Y'know...

[cybereal]

Based on the way it is blindly worshipped, I would have to guess it long ago passed sentience and arose to the level of Deity.

Re:Y'know...

[Salmar]

My EARS are GONE!!

Perhaps this is caused by your sex life?

Are you guys lined up for the METHADONE PROGRAM or FOOD STAMPS??

Possibly existential despair are caused by this.

I'm into SOFTWARE!

Is it because of existential despair that you say you are intosoftware?

Re:Y'know...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're saying this on a thread overflowing with frothing vim fanbois? Either you're deliberately being ironic, or you're stupid even by Slashdot standards.

Re:Y'know...

[hasbeard]

Yeah, that Talk to the Emacs Psychiatrist thing is scary.

Re:Y'know...

[cybereal]

:wq!

Re:Y'know...

[lubricated]

Don't say that too loud or It'll hear you.

Escape
Meta
Alt
Control
Shift

Re:Y'know...

[Anonymous Coward]

--
"You finally tired of him, eh?"

Needing

[SuperKendall]

Not needing and not having are two different things. Considering the way VI works drives you to schizophrenia, the lack of Eliza is just one of many things VI users have going against them!

Re:Needing

[drinkypoo]

The only thing more abusive than throwing someone into vi without explaining modality first would be to throw them into vi that had a message to tell you to press (whatever) for help, and popped up eliza when you did so. "How do I quit?" "How does it make you feel that how do I quit?"

So EMACS really is like an operating system...

[Junior J. Junior III]

And it takes about as long for GNU to release a new version as it takes Microsoft to release Vista.

But who shed more features before going gold?

Obligatory flamebait

[Alioth]

Does it still (E)ventually (M)alloc (A)ll (C)ore (S)torage?

Or is it just now Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping? :-)

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in this day and age of desktop environments and fancy webbrowsers, Emacs is positively lightweight. My current emacs process which includes both my email client and irc client in addition to being my editor takes about 23 megs.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[drinkypoo]

These days, the memory consumption of emacs and vim is highly similar. (You could use an older vi, but then you wouldn't get formatting and hilighting...)

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[skiflyer]

I dunno what you're talking about... emacs is a great performer on every system I use it on and it rarely pushes 50-60 megs.

What I'd like to know is if I can finally open my 500meg plus log files with it, I'm sick of using textpad on windows to read log files.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is it just now Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping? :-) No, that's the Canadian version.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Alan Shutko]

If you're on a 64-bit computer, yes. If you're still on a 32-bit platform, no. Max filesize is something that didn't change this release.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[outZider]

I heard 'less' works really well.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Baki]

Many years ago they used to accuse emacs (not entirely unjustified) of using lots of memory, "Eight Megabyte And Constantly Swapping". However, emacs still uses 8MB (in fact when I start it in text mode there is only 6.2MB resident) whereas other editors, even simple ones, have overtaken emacs in this respect and use many times more.

So it is quite ironical that emacs used to be a pig, but nowadays is lean and mean compared to most other editors. Still it is more powerful than most.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Ant P.]

Great, someone port XULRunner to emacs and we have a winner.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[0123456789]

Yes it did.

"The max size of buffers and integers has been doubled. On 32bit machines, it is now 256M (i.e. 268435455)."

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Rakshasa Taisab]

So we can now call emacs for "Eight Megabyes And Ceased Swapping"?

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[compro01]

Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping EHMACS? is it made in Canada now?

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[The Warlock]

Now, emacs and vi are both ridiculously lightweight, since I've got more than eight megs of RAM in my goddamn pocket on any given day, let alone in my PC, and Eclipse has taken the "pig" position.

Goddamn, that thing takes up almost as much RAM as Photoshop. Who had the idea to cram that big an app into the Java Virtual Machine, anyway?

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[rxmd]

No, but you still need to use all of (E)scape (M)eta (A)lt (Control) (Shift).

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[skiflyer]

So it's still pathetically small... why don't they let us change that?

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[sparcnut]

Vim 7.1 uses 3.1m resident for me.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[SolitaryMan]

Or is it just now Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping? :-)

I'm afraid this joke is 792 Megs old.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[FlunkedFlank]

For the record, all of the Emacs acronym jokes are actually shipped with every Emacs distribution in a file called "etc/JOKES", which has a ton of other hilarious stuff in it too. If you don't want to go digging through a local emacs installation, here's the official copy of the JOKES file.

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Alan Shutko]

It's an implementation detail relating to their lisp implementation. I think fixing it hasn't been a huge deal since we've all thought we'd have been on 64-bit platforms for years now....

Re:Obligatory flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is it just now Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping?

Yeah, it's ehmacs.

We were always using VI

[SuperKendall]

But then once in a while, some among us elevated to a higher plane - the Emacs User. :-)

Emacs 22 took six years, just to find anything Emacs 21 didn't already offer...

Re:We were always using VI

[PopeRatzo]

I've learned enough vi to get some work done, but I've never tried emacs. Is this new version any easier to figure out? The first time I had a Linux box, a knowledgeable friend set up emacs for me, but I just couldn't get it before my frustration-limit kicked in.

I got stuck in a thunderstorm riding home from work on my bike and I'm too beat to read TFA. Is there any new reason for a Linux noob to take a second look at emacs?

I just got my music/video Linux production machine (Ubuntu) set up and I'm high off my success getting my pro audio interface to work, so I'm willing to take on a mild Linux challenge.

Re:We were always using VI

[SuperKendall]

It would be similar...

Really, there's nothing in Emacs to figure out - since it has a menu, you can save and so faroth using that, if you don't feel like learning the keyboard commands (whch have a huge amount of depth and are logically organized).

You load files and the appropriate mode should be applied. You get more out of it if you learn some modal specific commands (like autoflow comments in C mode) but you can always go without them.

The feature I still find most powerful is macro recording, if you ever decide to go in for a second look - C-x ( starts a key board macro, C-x ) ends recording, and C-x e runs the macro you last recorded.

Re:We were always using VI

[0123456789]

One of the improvements for v22 is in the macro handling. F3 now starts recording, F4 ends recording, and F4 again runs the last recorded macro. Easier to remember than the old shortcuts (which still work), and perhaps more useful for an Emacs novice. There's other changes to the macro handling as well; it's even sweeter than it was before.

Re:We were always using VI

[Mr. Underbridge]

Emacs 22 took six years, just to find anything Emacs 21 didn't already offer...

Sure. Now maybe that they're done with that, they'll finish Hurd.

Re:We were always using VI

[jbolden]

Is there any new reason for a Linux noob to take a second look at emacs?

Not as a noob. Give it a few years. There is no one who has learned emacs that regrets it.

Re:We were always using VI

[smittyoneeach]

Oh, nonsense. Hit http://www.emacswiki.com/, find a topic of interest, and get crazy with the cheeze-whiz.

Re:We were always using VI

[HAKdragon]

But then once in a while, some among us elevated to a higher plane

So that would explain the smell, emacs users are in fact dead. They don't just smell that way! ;)

Re:We were always using VI

[Raenex]

If you do try it, do yourself a favor and swap your left caps lock and control keys. Caps lock is pretty worthless anyways, so even if you don't stick with Emacs it's nice to have the control key right next to your left pinky.

Re:We were always using VI

[Javagator]

Now maybe that they're done with that, they'll finish Hurd.

If you have Emacs, you don't need Hurd.

Re:We were always using VI

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Agreed. I Think it actually is a change you do out of necessity. When you find the need to edit at the same time +5 php files, php.ini, httpd.conf, a few very complex SQL sentences, and at the same time test those SQLs, those PHPs, restart services, and tail a few logfiles, all while checking e-mail, Emacs comes as a natural solution.

Re:We were always using VI

[666999]

You most likely meant http://www.emacswiki.org/.

Re:We were always using VI

[KDR_11k]

You mean:

Emacs 22 took six years, just to find a key combo Emacs 21 didn't already use...

Re:We were always using VI

[Anonymous Coward]

I've learned enough vi to get some work done, but I've never tried emacs. Is this new version any easier to figure out? The first time I had a Linux box, a knowledgeable friend set up emacs for me, but I just couldn't get it before my frustration-limit kicked in.

Been there, done that. Realized it was a big joke to get me to memorize a completely non-nonsensical, non-intuitive lisp machine as an editor. Then the creators run around extolling their intelligence over others by mastering the cryptic thing. Reminds me of the joke where people paid to see a donkey with his ass where his head should be. Each entered after paying a quarter (its an old story) and found the donkey in its stall backwards. That was it. At that point, no one wanted to tell newcomers how dumb they'd been so none of them told the people left in line that it was a sham. That's what Emacs looks like.

I got stuck in a thunderstorm riding home from work on my bike and I'm too beat to read TFA. Is there any new reason for a Linux noob to take a second look at emacs?

Other than GNU's push to get rid of manpages and put all useful information in "info" format that uses the emacs navigation set, no, not at all.

Re:We were always using VI

[joss]

Hey, do you know how to save a recorded macro and then run
it again later - eg, if I have 3 macros I want to be able to use,
how to I run them each at will rather than just the most recently recorded ?

I've wanted an answer to this question for about, oh, maybe 15 years
now, but never badly enough to wade through enough documentation to find an answer.

Re:We were always using VI

[AdamKG]

Absolutely do this. I also like to swap my tab and alt keys, although that's not nearly as dramatic a change as caps lock/control. Since the GP was using Ubuntu, do sudo apt-get install xkeycaps for a great program to make the remapping easy without having to worry about xmodmap tweaking.

Re:We were always using VI

[cthulhu11]

... hopefully it offers the ability to compile and run without dumping core, which 21 didn't offer on Solaris 10 / x86.

Re:We were always using VI

[mwpeters]

When you find the need to edit at the same time +5 php files, php.ini, httpd.conf, a few very complex SQL sentences, and at the same time test those SQLs, those PHPs, restart services, and tail a few logfiles, all while checking e-mail, Emacs comes as a natural solution.

You misspelt "screen". HTH!

Re:We were always using VI

[Anonymous Coward]

Faggot.

Re:We were always using VI

[UnknownSoldier]

Cool .sig

Re:We were always using VI

[James_Aguilar]

Haha, I love Emacs, but this is not true. I'm already using a 23 alpha build. Xft antialiased fonts are . . . necessary to me.

Re:We were always using VI

[Eideewt]

And/or learn to use your right control key as well. Nothing makes Emacs more comfortable than never having to reach for those key combos.

Re:We were always using VI

[drew]

Emacs- a solution only PHP could drive you to!

Re:We were always using VI

[Haeleth]

And/or learn to use your right control key as well.

What right control key? To the right of my spacebar I have Meta*, Compose, and Alt Graph...

More to the point, I don't quite understand why people say to "swap" caps lock and control. Caps lock is totally useless, so it's far friendlier simply to remap it to be a second control key. That way other people are a bit less disoriented when they have to use your keyboard.

* No, Gnome, it's not a "Windows key".

Re:We were always using VI

[jgrahn]

One of the improvements for v22 is in the macro handling. F3 now starts recording, F4 ends recording, and F4 again runs the last recorded macro.

Damn. I've had call-last-kbd-macro bound to F8 for the past eleven years.

Re:We were always using VI

[jgrahn]

If you do try it, do yourself a favor and swap your left caps lock and control keys.

Assuming, of course, they are not already in their Proper Places (nowhere and to the left of A, respectively).

Re:We were always using VI

[jgrahn]

Since the GP was using Ubuntu, do sudo apt-get install xkeycaps for a great program to make the remapping easy without having to worry about xmodmap tweaking.

Huh? xkeycaps isn't Ubuntu-specific, and remapping Caps Lock is such a common task it's a one-line command in xorg.conf/XFree*.conf: Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps" and so on.

Re:We were always using VI

[Eideewt]

For that matter, I've got insert, delete, alt. Damn laptops. Perhaps I should have said, learn to use both control keys if you are lucky enough to have one on both sides of the keyboard.

Re:We were always using VI

[try_anything]

Exactly! Now why isn't that common knowledge? I used Linux for five years before even hearing about screen. Many of my acquaintances who have been using Linux much longer than me have never heard of it. Why is that? It's the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Also, the only decent way to work on a Linux box from Windows (assuming that like me you can't afford a fancy commercial X server) is by running a screen session inside Putty.

Re:We were always using VI

[andi75]

screen has become forgotten when people start getting their own workstations (e.g. Sun IPX) on their desks, and ran this new 'X-Windows' thingie, enabling them to a) run apps locally, possibly with an NFS mounted /home and b) have multiple windows open.

Before that we all had VT100 or VT220 terminals and logged into the same machine. Those were the days of 'ctrl-a d' and 'screen -r'.

Re:We were always using VI

[ksheff]

By default, I have all F1-F12 along with the shifted, control, and control+shift combinations mapped to different emacs operations I use every day. Looks like I'll have to remap that functionality to my existing layout.

Re:We were always using VI

[gfxguy]

I'd used emacs for years, had a lot of cool key-bindings and macros and so forth, and drifted away for various reasons. Now I'd have to relearn a lot of stuff. You know what? My IDEs and other editors do just fine. I really doubt I'd be more productive relearning emacs.

Re:We were always using VI

[mi]

There is no one who has learned emacs that regrets it.

Same is true about vi, I think :-)

I love the headline

[nizo]

As a long time vi user I can say this is the best thing that has been coughed up since the hairball my cat expelled last week.

On the upside, matching our carpet to the color of the catfood has turned out to be a brilliant strategy so far.

Re:I love the headline

[nizo]

...this is the best thing that has been coughed up since the hairball my cat expelled last week....

So I take it whoever modded me as flamebait thinks this isn't the best thing that has been coughed up since the hairball incident? Will the persecution of emacs never end?????

Re:I love the headline

[Anonymous Coward]

My kingdom for a mod point right now...that's just what I needed to end a Monday with. Brilliant, sir, simply brilliant.

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[plams]

Don't compare apples to.. operating systems.

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[Bongo Bill]

Why choose?

EMACS

[rustalot42684]

(E)scape (M)eta (A)lt (C)ontrol (S)hift

Re:EMACS

[drinkypoo]

You laugh, but I had a boss who blamed his carpal on emacs and needing to type strange key combinations. He had one of those snazzy kinesis keyboards, and with it he could type for almost 30 minutes at a time! Escape Meta Alt Control Shift for the loss!

Re:EMACS

[Riverman5]

Uh, Esc Meta and Alt are the same thing. And lucky for me, I press those with my left hand, which doesn't have carpal tunnel.

The carpal tunnel emacs correlation probably has more to do with productivity and less to do with difficult keystrokes.

Re:EMACS

[0123456789]

As a long time Emacs (and XEmacs) user, can I just say that sticky-keys is your friend. Saves having to hold down the modifier keys. I've now modified my OS to use that as the default in other applications too.

Re:EMACS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say it's most likely down to people who were never taught to touch-type correctly. Folks, there's a reason you have two shifts, two controls, two alts, two supers (windoze keys) - you're supposed to use one hand to type the key, while the other hand holds the modifier. "self-taught" typists often get this horribly, horribly wrong, and twist their wrists about. Think piano playing - wrists straight, or you get a rap across the knuckles from stern Ms. Baxendale. Stern, disciplined Ms. Baxendale with her hair in a tight bun and wearing those high-heeled boots. mmmm.... Sorry, what was I saying - I mean, my point is, if you're pressing the modifier with the same hand as the letter key, you are losing. Unless you've remapped capslock to be control. That's borderline okay for your left hand, if you've got adult-sized hands I guess - but it's still not as good as JUST TYPING PROPERLY.

I have to, um, go be alone a little now.

Re:EMACS

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one person's opinions along with the ergonomic adjustments he made to his Emacs setup:

http://www.santafe.edu/~nelson/ergo/

Re:EMACS

[rbanffy]

I would risk that a text editor that requires you to reconfigure your OS in order to avoid RSIs is going a little bit too far.

Re:EMACS

[Riverman5]

I don't think that guy really understands the problem. Reminds me of an old car that used to overheat on me going up steep hills. If I slowed the car down, the temperature would hold steady at HOT, but would not go into the red. It didn't matter how slow I went.

One day someone suggested I turn on my heater full blast going up this familiar hill. I did that and the temperature went right down to normal levels.

So this guys tweaks to emacs is comparable to slowing the car down, while a real solid fix is to have surgery. The surgery is relatively simple outpatient procedure to make a little more space in your wrist for your nerves and things.

After struggling with it for years, I'm convinced now that it's just genetic. My wrists are smaller than usual, yet I do more with them than most people, no way around it.

By the way, screw the switching mouse hands crap, just get a pen tablet. I type with the pen in my hand, and it actually helps my hand remain in a more natural position, with the eraser end between my thumb and forefinger (in the web) and the pointed end in between middle and ring finger, fingers all curved naturally.

Wacom Graphire 4 is like $130 or something, IIRC.

Re:EMACS

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it's an OS that needs to be reconfigured to edit text without getting RSI that's too far.

Re:EMACS

[0123456789]

Fair point. I should also mention that I have no idea if sticky keys helps to prevent RSI or not, but it certainly makes the computer more comfortable for me to use. I think software should be modified to how I want to work, rather than have to modify my behaviour to suit the computer. Hence why I always replace Caps Lock with another Ctrl (why is this such a pain in Windows; it's 3 clicks on the Mac or in KDE?). It's also why I use Emacs.

Re:EMACS

[Anonymous Coward]

And I would suggest that RSI is caused by constant repetitive movement, not straining or reaching.
  Further, I would suggest that carpal tunnel syndrome is psychosomatic, since it responds so poorly to surgery, and its incidence rate fluctuates with the amount of news coverage devoted to it.
  But if your placebo-keyboard helps, by all means buy one.

Re:EMACS

[tehshen]

Does doing that really help?

When you're dualing (dueling?) key chords, you just keep the modifier key held down. That is, C-x-f, where you hold down Control all the time. If you use sticky-keys, you have to type C x C f, and I find that my hand's over the Control key most of the time anyway.

There's always Escape -> Meta. And putting the control key in the right place, too.

Re:EMACS

[Abcd1234]

You laugh, but I had a boss who blamed his carpal on emacs and needing to type strange key combinations.

Well, chording is very difficult on the fingers, especially if you don't swap the capslock and control keys (I never could get used to that layout). I used emacs for *years* before finally relenting and switching cold turkey to vim. Suddenly the shooting pains in my left hand, which I'd been suffering with on and off for years, went away, and haven't returned since.

Re:EMACS

[Eideewt]

"I type with the pen in my hand, and it actually helps my hand remain in a more natural position, with the eraser end between my thumb and forefinger (in the web) and the pointed end in between middle and ring finger, fingers all curved naturally."

That's pretty clever. I may give it a shot after I build a desk for my desktop. Not because I have wrist problems, but it sounds like fun. Although I must admit to having a fondness for the left-side mouse position, since it makes it easier to center the keyboard.

Re:But does it run linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it JWZ who said a program was never done until it did email?

The modern version would be that a program is never done until it boots linux

EMACSOS

[JustNiz]

EMACS is a great operating system, it just needs a good editor.

Who needs it?

[Anonymous Coward]

All former Emacs users switched to Windows long time ago and are using M$Word nowadays.... Forgetaboutit.

Number One

[MulluskO]

So easy to use, no wonder it's number one!

Re:Number One

[guabah]

But...

Could a caveman still use it?

No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

For the longest time, "learn emacs" has been on my list. I want to hack lisp (an incredibly easy language) and emacs seems to be the editor for it (not so easy) and the tutorial does not do it for me. Worse, I type in dvorak, so the keybindings won't work they are envisioned.

It is one of those rare programs that just don't click - any easy online tutorials or advice?

It's really one of the programs I want to start using.

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[TheRaven64]

I'll probably be flamed for this, but I use Vim with the Steel-Bank Common Lisp compiler.

There, now we can add Scheme Vs Common Lisp to the existing Vi Vs EMACS and GNU Vs XEmacs flamewars that are already going on in this thread...

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[thestuckmud]

Emacs is big, but you can learn to edit files with it in a matter of minutes. It comes with a good manual, a tutorial, and extensive (and powerful) self-documentation features. Don't be put off because you heard it was hard to learn - that advice is probably the largest impediment for people who actually want to learn Emacs. Of course, learning *all* of emacs is pointless for most of us, so don't think you have read every section. Especially at first.

You will also find lots of LISP resources bundled with Emacs, and a handy *scratch* buffer where you can evaluate LISP code with the press of a (control-) key.

As for your keyboard layout: I googled "dvorak emacs" and the first link I clicked has a nice looking customization file for emacs. Pick one that looks good and try it.

It is sad that I almost feel obliged to answer Emacs detractors. All I am going to say is, if you don't like like Emacs, why on Earth are you reading this???

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is big, but you can learn to edit files with it in a matter of minutes.

You've got to be joking. I'll admit, I can be clueless at times, but every single time over the past 15 years that I've tried Emacs I've ended up killing it from another terminal window because I can't even figure out how to exit the fucking program. I usually end up getting caught in some read-only help system and can't figure out how to get out of it because the help is most unhelpful. There seems to be some kind of menu system in the version I just tried, but I can't figure out how to get to the File, Edit, Options, Buffers, Tools, and Help using any key combination I try. Granted, it could be you simply can't use Emacs from a MacOS X terminal.app cleanly, but vi works just fine. I think I'll stick to vi.

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[be-fan]

Slime is really worth learning Emacs for. I used to program Lisp with vim, and my productivity improve substantially when I started using slime.

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[mechsoph]

I use Vim with the Steel-Bank Common Lisp compiler.

If you don't use SLIME, then you're really missing out. I switched from vim to emacs a year or two ago for this reason. Using viper-mode in emacs gives you VI keybindings, so you still have a real editor.

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[thestuckmud]

Do you often try something again and again, expecting different results? But hey, if you don't have what it takes to type "emacs key" on Google's search page and press "I'm feeling lucky", then honestly I'd have to recommend Apple's TextEdit application for you. I understand that it is easy to get lost in emacs info hell, but it is just as easy to find helpful tutorials. Printing out a cheat sheet for common key bindings will get you started without even that.

Next time you try running emacs in terminal-mode - and it runs quite well that way - take a minute to read the instructions on the splash screen. You'll find out how to access Emacs' help features, exit the program, and use the menus. Better still, install the version announced here and you'll get a real windowed (Carbon) OS X application, with menus accessible by mouse. What could be easier?

By the way, I built emacs 22 from source since I did not find an OS X build. Yhe build is This is essentially "configure; make; make install", but requires reading mac/INSTALL to find the option needed for OS X and you have to use sudo for the "make install". If that's too much trouble, then Emacs probably isn't for you.

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here, thanks for your advice. I am actually running AquaMacs, but I assume that is essentially emacs, I'll try the dvorak bindings.

One of the other reasons I want to try Emacs and just to see what the hoopla is about. The extensible editor does not say much to me - what does it mean? What can I do?

Maybe I'll find out in a few days...

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[grumbel]

I can be clueless at times, but every single time over the past 15 years that I've tried Emacs I've ended up killing it from another terminal window because I can't even figure out how to exit the fucking program.

Have you actually looked at it after you started it? Because it shows a nice little text right after you started that explains to you how to quit it, how to display the manual and all that stuff that you need to get started.

Re:No kidding - someone help me learn emacs

[JesseMcDonald]

every single time over the past 15 years that I've tried Emacs I've ended up killing it from another terminal window because I can't even figure out how to exit the ... program.

Try C-x C-s (to save) and C-x C-c (to close). I agree that it's not particularly intuitive to the uninitiated. Incidently, you don't need a separate terminal: C-z from almost anything (not just Emacs) will suspend the active program and give you a command-line, from which you can run "kill %" to terminate the program or "fg" to return to it.

Ok, but does it include...

[frinkillo]

...a good editor?

/me ducks

Re:Ok, but does it include...

[Riverman5]

Remember how VI couldn't handle the arrow keys before? It's come a long way, hasn't it?

Re:Ok, but does it include...

[Constantine XVI]

viper-mode

Re:Ok, but does it include...

[darrint]

viper-mode + vimpulse. Visual mode in emacs. Twisted!

Re:Ok, but does it include...

[Ant P.]

It's already a good editor, when you're coming from Windows and your only prior experience with CLI text editors is edit.com.

Apart from F10 though, I never used it for anything else.

Re:Ok, but does it include...

[garvon]

No but I am sure you could hack one together with a small lisp macro

Re:Ok, but does it include...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a problem between keyboard and monitor.

Compatibility ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh - now to see of all my .el files (emacs lisp; which I've forgotten decades ago) I wrote back in the 80s are still compatible.

Hope the changes aren't too major.

Some things - like plain text editors - are mature enough products that they don't really need ongoing changes.

Re:Compatibility ?

[larry bagina]

MS Notepad (not updated since windows 2k) has better unicode support than emacs v21.

But....

[fyrie]

Does it run Linux?

Re:But....

[dkf]

Does it run Linux?

No, but it does autonomously write and submit kernel patches.

Re:But....

[MichaelSmith]

Does it run Linux?

No, but it does autonomously write and submit kernel patches.

For Hurd?

For those of you....,

[Chineseyes]

For those of you who have been holding your breath you may now exhale.

Re:For those of you....,

[revengebomber]

Too late, we already evolved* gills.

*In Alamaba, intelligently redesigned

ln -s vi emacs

[rossz]

'nuff said

Re:ln -s vi emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's already clear that you're an idiot.

Re:ln -s vi emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work...

$ emacs
bash: emacs: Too many levels of symbolic links

$ ls -l emacs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2 Jun 5 01:24 emacs -> vi

$ ls -l vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Jun 5 01:24 vi -> emacs

Gtk

[paugq]

Gtk for the debugger GUI!? No wonder this version took them so long!

Why wait for Emacs...

[DerCed]

Why wait for Emacs... ..if you can use Vi.

Re:Why wait for Emacs...

[Riverman5]

Cause vi is for buttholes!

Thank God for that OS9 support

[PrimeWaveZ]

I don't know what I'd do without emacs on my Beige G3 tower

Re:Thank God for that OS9 support

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't know what I'd do without emacs on my Beige G3 tower

Work?

Re:Thank God for that OS9 support

[that this is not und]

With M-x shell you can get to a command prompt on classic MacOS.

Re:Thank God for that OS9 support

[PrimeWaveZ]

I think the sarcasm about support for a long-since-abandoned OS was not understood properly.

heh, I love emacs

[Richard McBeef]

M-x tetris

Emacs is my favorite operating system

[Weaselmancer]

...if only it had a word processor. Then it'd be complete.

Re:Emacs is my favorite operating system

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.h tml

Um, mirrors don't have it

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

And it's really just the sources that are out; there's precious few binaries out there.

Can we post binary torrents in this thread? I want OS X, preferably Universal, but Intel-only will do.

Re:Um, mirrors don't have it

[Zaurus]

You can check out the CVS version and build it yourself following these instructions.

That's by far the best way to use it on OS X that I have ever found.

Re:Um, mirrors don't have it

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I suspect it's easier and quicker to just download it from here (as I've been doing for a long while now with the prereleases): http://www.porkrind.org/emacs/

Re:Um, mirrors don't have it

[CrimsonScythe]

Get this one instead. It's updated reasonably often, and has thus far been rock stable here. It also comes with a bunch of packages included, but isn't configured into oblivion like Aquamacs.

Re:Um, mirrors don't have it

[StressedEd]

Any idea how to emulate a middle mouse button click with Carbon Emacs? If something's running under X11 it's easy (Ctrl|Alt|Apple)+Trackpad Click, but I can't figure it out for Carbon Emacs. It's a pain when using things like flyspell, since one can't simply middle click and choose the appropriate word. Using a three button USB mouse works fine, so I just need to figure it out for the trackpad.

There's a discussion here. I assume that the problem must be quite subtle.

Re:Um, mirrors don't have it

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFM.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node /Mac-OS.html#Mac-OS

Re:Um, mirrors don't have it

[StressedEd]

The magic Lisp incantation is mentioned deep in TFM,

Especially for one-button mice, the multiple button feature can be emulated by setting mac-emulate-three-button-mouse to t or reverse. If set to t (reverse, respectively), pressing the mouse button with the key is recognized as the second (third) button, and that with the key is recognized as the third (second) button.

It strikes me as quite bizarre that it's not set to this by default on a Mac which conventionally has just one button mice, particularly as this corresponds to the convention under the X11 server, but it now works.

Terrific OS ... an editor in this release?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a non-flaming vi user, I just want to say what a terrific OS Emacs is and only hope they include an editor in this release for good measure!

Re:Terrific OS ... an editor in this release?

[CRC'99]

Who would have thought that once every six years my sig would actually be true ;)

How do I turn that OFF?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You could use an older vi, but then you wouldn't get formatting and hilighting...

How do I turn that off?

The linux install my company did on my desktop has a true vi but simlinks "view" (the canonical "vi it in read-only mode") to "vim". Unfortunately, some of the files I need to work on come out in unreadable purple-on-black under vim, so when I "view" them to open them read-only they become unreadable-only. B-(

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[drinkypoo]

The linux install my company did on my desktop has a true vi but simlinks "view" (the canonical "vi it in read-only mode") to "vim". Unfortunately, some of the files I need to work on come out in unreadable purple-on-black under vim, so when I "view" them to open them read-only they become unreadable-only. B-(

My suggestion is either to create a bin directory in your home and prefix $HOME/bin to your path, and put your own symlinks there, or to use aliases, depending on your shell and whether or not you can change it.

But if you want to just turn it off instead of using normal vi, you should be able to use :syn off (or just "syn off" in .vimrc)

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[Anonymous Coward]

put

syntax [on|off]

in your .vimrc

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[cerelib]

":syn off"

To make it permanent add "syn off" to your ~/.vimrc file.

Or, if you only want to turn it off only when using view or vim on readonly, then put this in:

if &readonly
    syn off
endif

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[menkhaura]

If your terminal background is black, instead of turning off the syntax highlighting you might want to try

set bg=dark

on your ~/.vimrc

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[Jimmy King]

Along with turning the syntax highlighting off completely as others have shown, you can add 'set background=dark' to your .vimrc. This changes the color scheme of the highlighting to colors that you can actually read with the black background.

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[shrykk]

Unfortunately, some of the files I need to work on come out in unreadable purple-on-black under vim, so when I "view" them to open them read-only they become unreadable-only. B-(

That seems a... slightly odd reason to use vi instead. Vim is probably just set in light-background mode. Type :set background=dark, or better yet, add
set background=dark
to your ~/.vimrc

(That's also the place you would put syntax off if you really didn't want syntax highlighting. But vim's syntax highlighting (of just about everything, including some surprising formats) is a great feature IMO).

Re:How do I turn that OFF?

[Nevyn]

Here's what I have in my ~/.vimrc

set bg=dark
" syntax off
" set foldmethod=manual
set foldlevel=999999

set showcmd " display incomplete commands
set incsearch " do incremental searching

set noautoindent " let me hack damnit

set backup

The "syntax off" bit will stop it doing syntax highlighting, but set bg=dark fixed the colours for me so I didn't need that anymore.

Actually that's the reason for the delay...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Or is it just now Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping? :-)

Actually it's now eighty meg and that's the reason for the long delay: They had to put in a whole plumbers' supply of kitchen sinks to get from 8 meg to 80.

Any OS X builds?

[JimDaGeek]

The only OS X builds I have seen are still based on the 6 y/o version. Anyone know of an OS X build that stays current?

I just started a build on an Intel Tiger system with "./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --enable-carbon-app" and all seems OK so far, though I have never built emacs on OS X before and I am not sure if this is the way to build emacs on OS X.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[JimDaGeek]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but, the compile finished in only a little over a minute. I though emacs would take longer. I have always built vim, not emacs. The make install step took longer with all the compressing. Anyway, for those who are using OS X, the command I gave above works fine. After that, just do "sudo make install" and you will have Emacs installed under /Applications.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the carbon emacs builds, which are updated every 2-3 months, and have been using emacs 22 prerelease for a long time.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[Zaurus]

Someone on a slashdot post or blog somewhere posted instructions on how to build and install carbon emacs from CVS. I've used it on my PowerBook, and two MacBook Pro's (Core Duo, then Core 2 Duo) with great success.

Here's the instructions I saved:

mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/sources/emacs co emacs
cd emacs ./configure --enable-carbon-app
make bootstrap
make
sudo make install

Then I put the following in my .bashrc so that I can easily launch it from the command-line. The best part is that when you launch it in the background with a file argument, emacs grabs focus when it comes up. The emacs that requires Apple's X11 would never come to the front on launch.

alias emacs="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emac s -g 110x40 --no-splash"

(you may want to adjust the columns and width from 110 and 40 to your own preference)

NOTE: I haven't tried this since 22 was officially released.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[JimDaGeek]

I just tried it with 22 and it worked great. Thanks for the tip.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[MarkWatson]

I wrote a blog entry yesterday: http://markwatson.com/blog/

with my Mac build options and my must-have .emacs code to toggle off the too large graphics icons tool bar:

(global-set-key "\C-xt" 'tool-bar-mode)

Aquamacs really is a better Mac application but I have had occasional crashes with Franz Lisp and ELI with recent builds the last few months so I will stick with the Mac app build that I did yesterday for a while.

Just an idea: also try the text mode emacs (Apple supplied or a new build), running in a Mac OS X Terminal app running under 'screen': type screen, hit a return to get past the slash screen, run Emacs, etc.: control-a c to create new screens, control-a n to skip forward to next screen, control-a p for previous screen, and for emacs user the all-important control-a a to send a control-a to emacs.

screen + console emacs is a bit old-school, but I really like the combination.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[JimDaGeek]

Thanks for the tips. I love screen. I use it a lot. I ssh into my home box from work and have a bunch of screen sessions going all the time. I get my email and usenet from my home box via screen over ssh. Fast and schaweeet. Boss comes by? No problem. I can kill my connection and still have my session going. Not that my boss would know what the hell I was doing (or probably even care), but just want to be on the safe side ;-)

Re:Any OS X builds?

[Lachryma]

Even easier:

cd emacs/mac
./make-package --self-contained

Makes a .dmg which includes an installer. Self-contained means all the support files end up in the Emacs.app directory, so nothing is installed in /usr.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[belg4mit]

What are you smoking? emacs-nox plays terribly with screen's default modifier of C-a. Blech.

escape ^uu

Yeah, that still clobbers something (repeat command N-times IIRC) but it ain't nearly as important as "Home."

Re:Any OS X builds?

[CrimsonScythe]

See my post earlier in the discussion for a great Emacs for OS X.

Re:Any OS X builds?

[Eideewt]

I prefer

escape ^]]

Clobbers something or other in Vim (go to tag?) and abort recursive edit in Emacs (I think... not sure what that does), but pretty good.

Probably....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Since emacs has Lisp built in, and you could write a CPU simulator in Lisp, you should be able to run Linux within emacs.

It would run pretty slow though.

Re:Probably....

[bucket_brigade]

Saying that emacs has lisp build-in is somewhat of an understatement. Emacs IS a lisp.

brokeback editor

[gimpimp]

i wish i could :q! you!

Re:brokeback editor

[CrimsonScythe]

Well, I'm wary of any editor that takes the commands through the colon. Add on a Brokeback reference, and my homometer is going haywire!

I kid, I kid... I personally use both Emacs and Vim

.

Re:brokeback editor

[Ian Bell]

Jake's line was "I wish I knew how to quit you"

I always think that with vi.

Re:brokeback editor

[Trogre]

so.. does that mean you swing both ways?

Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

I use emacs for months now. When you install Color Theme, it's actually quite nice. I wish they fix the following issues:

1. No key combo to delete whole line you are currently on. Sure I can ctrl-a, ctrl-k, ctrl-k, but that blows.

2. When you do global search/replace, it's easy to screw up the minibuffer if you try to scroll the view, say by merely scrolling the mouse wheel. Then you've got to type in your search and replace terms all over again.

3. Speaking of search, maybe I'm just an idiot, but I don't know how to get emacs to search through the document based on some pattern I just happen to have in the copy buffer. This is infuriating to type ctrl-s and not be able to spit into the mini-buffer whatever text you've already got in the copy buffer.

4. non-standard cut/paste key sequences. I use both mac and win32, so the cut/paste keys (ctrl-W, ctrl-Y) are standard within emacs but incredibly unstandard within the mac (apple-c/apple-v) and win32 (ctrl-c, ctrl-v) ecosystem in which it is placed. This might have been fine in the 1980s, but not in the 200x's.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how to get emacs to search through the document based on some pattern I just happen to have in the copy buffer. Ctrl-Y == middle-click == paste. then keep pressing Ctrl-S as usual for next hit.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Zaurus]

3. Speaking of search, maybe I'm just an idiot, but I don't know how to get emacs to search through the document based on some pattern I just happen to have in the copy buffer. This is infuriating to type ctrl-s and not be able to spit into the mini-buffer whatever text you've already got in the copy buffer.
"Paste", though it's "Yank" in emacs.

Just to be crystal clear, bring up search and paste your "pattern" in:

ctrl-s ctrl-y

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[m0rep0rk]

As with most free software, improvements to Emacs are made by users suggesting improvements or reporting bugs on the mailing lists. M-x report-emacs-bug is useful for this, and the Emacs manual describes the disciplined process of making a good bug report. If you just grumble about perceived shortcomings in other forums, then the chances are, no it won't get fixed.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[MimsyBoro]

1. Emacs is extensible. I personally use the home-mark-line-down sequence but you can easily write your own lisp function to do what you want and map it anywhere. Don't wait for he developers to do it for you.

2. I don't know exactly what you mean but I disable the mouse scroll in Emacs (too messy, and you shouldn't be using the mouse anyway)

3. When in interactive search if you press [Return] then you enter the regular search mode, you can easily use your favorite yank sequence and viola!

4. If you really want use [Ctrl-Insert] and [Shift-Insert]. They are the global ones. [Ctrl-C],[Ctrl-V] is an Office-related invention.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[The boojum]

From the NEWS:

** New command `kill-whole-line' kills an entire line at once.
By default, it is bound to C-S-[backspace].

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

3. When in interactive search if you press [Return] then you enter the regular search mode, you can easily use your favorite yank sequence and viola!

I'm sure you meant the French existential/demonstrative clause marker voilà there, and not viola, the Spanish second person familiar imperative form of the verb violar...

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[0123456789]

4. non-standard cut/paste key sequences. I use both mac and win32, so the cut/paste keys (ctrl-W, ctrl-Y) are standard within emacs but incredibly unstandard within the mac (apple-c/apple-v) and win32 (ctrl-c, ctrl-v) ecosystem in which it is placed. This might have been fine in the 1980s, but not in the 200x's.

Try cua-mode. It does what you want.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs cut/paste sequences predate CUA and those of us who don't subscribe to that particular dain bramage don't deserve to be subjected to it for your convenience. The idea that the copy key combination should be the same as that used for SIGINT is borken in the extreme. IBM and MS should be ashamed.

What's truly disturbing is the degree to which CUA has also infested kde and gnome, even making it hard to turn off.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

But yank means to take away, not lay down. How does that make sense?

copy paste copy paste copy paste
i never even heard of yours before dude.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

you can easily write your own lisp function to do what you want

Hoho.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

In the search modes, C-y grabs the rest of the line into the search string/pattern. Similarly, C-w grabs a character or a word, heuristically. To insert the head of the kill ring into the search string/pattern, use M-y.

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[Eideewt]

You kill text to the kill ring, then yank it back from there into your buffer. Simple! (if bizarre)

Re:Hope this Fixes the Annoyances

[EdelFactor19]

for #1, right your own freaking macro for it.

I make macros also to shorten up things I do commonly, like refactoring a variable name
i dont want to type alt-x replace-string ... everytime

one of the best things about emacs is the means with which they provide for you to create your own crazy shortcuts and macros, and then use those to create further crazy ones. its like meta-macroing or something

UNIX Philosophy

[nbritton]

Is it just me or does emacs go completely against the grains of *nix philosophy? i.e. simple, modular, parsimony, etc. The emacs base distribution is 126 megabytes, larger then the FreeBSD operating system... How did emacs get to be like this?

Re:UNIX Philosophy

[TheRaven64]

EMACS was never based on the UNIX philosophy. EMACS comes from the Lisp Machines philosophy. In many ways, it is an attempt to re-create the old Lisp Machines.

If you want an editor like EMACS that follows the UNIX philosophy, take a look at mg, from the OpenBSD team (now runs pretty much anywhere). Most people who use EMACS, however, would feel horribly lost on something like mg, since it's the non-UNIX-like nature of it that is its strength.

Re:UNIX Philosophy

[MS-06FZ]

Is it just me or does emacs go completely against the grains of *nix philosophy? i.e. simple, modular, parsimony, etc. The emacs base distribution is 126 megabytes, larger then the FreeBSD operating system... How did emacs get to be like this? (Huh? The binaries on gnu.org are around 36MiB... If you still think of that as large, then fine - but it's a long way from 126 MiB....)

I have a general idea of why this may be the case. The straightforward answer, of course, is feature bloat, right? Everybody wanted something else added to the editor, lots of that stuff got integrated into the core release, etc. But why did everything have to get integrated in the first place, if the Unix philosophy is that the system should be host to a large number of cooperating, simple, largely single-use tools that could be easily connected together?

Basically, I contend, it's the same reason why Ruby, Perl, and Python all have their own implementations of various common libraries, redundant as they are - while the Unix philosophy is built up around ideas of data interchange, the system doesn't really do much to facilitate a high degree of interoperation. With no common assumptions of how interprocess data is formatted, software can't readily be written to take advantage of shell-level facilities on the system - and shell-level facilities can't be readily written in a way that software designed to work with shell-level concepts will readily be able to usefully interact with them. So, basically, for a package like Emacs to accumulate features, it must implement that functionality entirely within itself. Each of these mega-packages then becomes like its own little sovereign nation, and exchanges between the mighty applications are done with care. In effect, we ourselves (the programmers, that is) are moving away from the "Unix Philosophy" just because it seems the most straightforward way to get things done.

As an example, think about what would be required for a shell program to implement something rougly equivalent to regular expressions - let's say, a simple parser generator language, compact enough to be convenient for search/replace - in a way that Emacs could use this facility as readily as it can use its internal searches. There would have to be an elisp component to handle the Emacs-side interaction, of course - define the command name and keyboard shortcut, maybe even to perform the search as the user types it and update the Emacs display accordingly - then this would have to interface with the shell-level program that provides the functionality - providing the search as defined by the user, and streaming the whole text of the Emacs buffer being searched until the process signalled that it had found a match. Certainly feasible - the problem is the difficulty involved in binding this little program to enough "environments" to make it really useful to more than just Emacs. Every one becomes its own little chore - some wrapper code is required to make the functionality visible, make it work in the local language environment, deal with the peculiarities of that particular module, and so on. Not all of that can be truly automated away, but I believe a lot of it can. Hence, my belief that while the Unix method is sound, it requires a more modern infrastructure to really work.

Of course, there's an alternate perspective, too - Emacs was one of the early examples of an application built around a scripting engine. Nowadays that kind of thing is fairly common - you've got Python embedded in Blender, for instance - this effectively gives the application access to all the modules written for that one scripting language - and in some cases may also give the scripting language (outside of the application) access to the application's functionality - you could think of "everything Python" or "everything Perl" as its own little Unix-style ecosystem, of interoperating mini-tools. Emacs, being such an old example of this, carries more history, more cruft - it may be that other scripting applications will fare similarly, ten or fifteen years down the line...

Re:UNIX Philosophy

[Lehk228]

if you don't like it, use ed

Re:UNIX Philosophy

[reynaert]

A few historical notes:

1. Emacs predates the Lisp machines, it was originally developed for the MIT mainframes (in TECO, with TECO as an extension language). GNU Emacs has its origins mostly in Multics Emacs, a port to a different mainframe/OS, both the first Emacs implemented in Lisp and the first Emacs extended using Lisp (also the only standard Multics program using Lisp :). The influence of actual Lisp Machine Emacsen on GNU Emacs is rather limited (remember that Stallman wasn't a big fan of the commercial Lisp companies!).

Of course, none of these systems were even remotely Unix-like, so you're entirely correct that Emacs doesn't care about the Unix philosophy :)

2. mg predates OpenBSD (it dates from the eighties, based on MicroEMACS), though the version in OpenBSD is probably the only maintained one. It isn't very Unixy: no regular expression search/replace, no filtering text through pipes (both of these are pretty much defining for the Unix philosophy). It's just as much Emacs as you could get in a 16-bit micro :) (And I don't think most Emacs users would have too much trouble with it: it only implements a tiny subset of the GNU Emacs commands, but it gets them right.)

Re:UNIX Philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Emacs is modular, and there are wagonloads of modules. For, say, a typical panel applet displaying time and some other things, an Emacs "applet" will take a hit of probably several kilobytes.

A typical modular panel applet in GNOME doing the same task via CORBA and whatnot will take several megabytes and be usually less functional and much less extensible or debuggable.

How did UNIX get to be like this?

Can I use GTK interface to GDB standalone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be nice if there was a nice GDB GTK interface that could be used standalone or linked into other editors.

Or is it just an addition to KitchenSinkProgram?

Re:Can I use GTK interface to GDB standalone?

[Billly Gates]

I think ddd is gtk1.x based.

Re:Can I use GTK interface to GDB standalone?

[cortana]

Try nemiver. Far from perfect yet, but very promising.

Using Emacs to edit a text file is like...

[toadlife]

...using a front-end loader to put out the cat.

Re:Using Emacs to edit a text file is like...

[revengebomber]

...using a front-end loader to put down the cat. That's better.

Re:Using Emacs to edit a text file is like...

[An ominous Cow art]

GP post was more appropriate if your cat happens to be on fire.

Re:Using Emacs to edit a text file is like...

[fahrbot-bot]

Using Emacs to edit a text file is like using a front-end loader to put out the cat.

The appropriateness of this depends entirely on the cat.

OMG, what next??

[mobby_6kl]

This must be the third horseman. Let's just hope the unimaginable doesn't happen, and GNU doesn't puke out Hurd. That would mean the end of us all.

Re:OMG, what next??

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I hear there is little chance of that:

A) No one or nearly no one is working on it.

B) The non-existant developers recently decided to switch microkernels, setting the project back years.

I don't know who's a fault...

[rthille]

But I _still_ can't get GRUB to load it...I _still_ have to use this useless 'linux thingy' to invoke it!

Won't someone please help me with replacing my Symbolics machine?

Re:I don't know who's a fault...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a project to create a LISP OS for x86 architectures -- it's called Movitz. It's progressing a bit slow, though, because of a shortage of devs able to do the low-level work necessary. That's improving, and it now has VGA capabilities and such, but it's a long way yet from being complete.
Still, you can already run it on an emu like BOCHS, and I think Qemu can handle it in virtualization now.

http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/

Why do you say that?

[umeboshi]

Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
  TAX-DEFERRED!

I don't understand.

I want to TAKE IT HOME and DRESS IT UP in HOT PANTS!!

What makes you believe you might want to take it?

I'm young.. I'm HEALTHY.. I can HIKE THRU CAPT GROGAN'S LUMBAR REGIONS!

Maybe your plans have something to do with this.

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[BobNET]

Hell, even The Beatles use Vi...

Here's one

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I've been using prerelease builds from this page for over a year now: http://www.porkrind.org/emacs/. Issues have been minor and obscure recently.

Carpal

[Ungrounded Lightning]

And lucky for me, I press those with my left hand, which doesn't have carpal tunnel.

I'm a VIthian and don't have RSIs yet. I started to get carpal just a bit in my right hand about '86 or so - but switching the mouse to the other side (along with folding in the feet so the keyboard lies flat flat and adding a minimal wrist pad) cleared it up and has held it off for another 20 years so far. I just celebrated my 60th and am still typing away furiously every day.

Switching sides on the mouse has a two minute learning curve once you've added these two aliases:

### "three-button" version of X:
### alias rightmouse 'xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3"'
### alias leftmouse 'xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1"'

### "five-button" version of X:
alias rightmouse 'xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 4 5"'
alias leftmouse 'xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1 4 5"'

Mirroring the buttons lets you do mirror-motion on pressing them, which is just about automatic. I occasionally switch to the other side and am full speed either way.

But it wasn't carpal that made me stick with vi rather than switching to emacs.

Back when I bought my first unix box (in the early '70s) it only had two meg and used a motorola 8010 so it couldn't do demand paging to run a task bigger than the real RAM. Emacs wouldn't fit.

Since then I've occasionally looked into switching. But every time I do I see that EMACSians take about half-again as many keystrokes to do the things I do heavily. So in addition to the learning curve it would be a step backward in productivity, at least initially.

I considered using a vi emulation mode - until I discovered that (at the time) it had TWO of them, with different divergences from "real vi". B-b Rather than trying to solve the "donkey between two bales of hay" dilemma I stuck with vi.

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[Anonymous Coward]

What!? Its like the Universalist church. Some things shouldn't be pt together.

EHMACS?

[MS-06FZ]

Does it still (E)ventually (M)alloc (A)ll (C)ore (S)torage?

Or is it just now Eight Hundred Megs And Constantly Swapping? :-) As far as I know it's still called "EMACS", they haven't changed it to "EHMACS"...

Re:EHMACS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using the Canadian localisation, you insensitive clod!

pinhead is gone

[merlyn]

Killed by the lawyers. The only message now is:

"Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!"

I'm not making this up. I wish I were.

He didn't say "hot"

[SanityInAnarchy]

Emacs asian girlfriend will cook, clean, balance your checkbook, do your taxes, and never, ever complain... but she weighs 300 lbs.

Vi asian girlfriend just stands there looking pretty, but if you thought you were going to get anything done, you're sadly mistaken. It'll take you a week to figure out how to get that dress off...

Vim asian girlfriend will do anything you ask, as soon as you learn the language. Fortunately, most of us know words like "Bukakke" already, and it doesn't take much.

Re:He didn't say "hot"

[Lehk228]

will the pico implementation be directed at pedophiles?

Re:He didn't say "hot"

[tjstork]

So would KDevelop then be a hot polish chick with big tits? That's what I'm talking about!

Re:He didn't say "hot"

[SanityInAnarchy]

No, that would be Kate. KDevelop would be the wrapper (and all her toys).

Re:He didn't say "hot"

[dstar]

MS Word asian girlfriend is actually nouveau riche white trash with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cosmetic surgery, but she's already done the entire city and she's got a collection of diseases that would make the CDC jealous.

Re:He didn't say "hot"

[revengebomber]

MS Word asian girlfriend is actually nouveau riche white trash with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cosmetic surgery, but she's already done the entire city and she's got a collection of diseases that would make the CDC jealous. Brittany Spears?

Re:He didn't say "hot"

[DeBeuk]

Vi asian girlfriend just stands there looking pretty, but if you thought you were going to get anything done, you're sadly mistaken. It'll take you a week to figure out how to get that dress off...
 
:%s/clothes//g

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[NovaSupreme]

I've been a regular visitor to the church of Emacs and paying my weekly tribute to RMS on Sundays.

In the beginning emacs more than delighted with built-in debugger/mail/sokoban/all-language-modes and then I learned the power of lisp. Google for 5 minutes and then you can have your own scripts built in the editor to rotate the selection, crop 20% of the text from left, tranlsate the remaining junk into Russian and then to Polish or whatever you want, power is immense! Over time my .emacs has grown to have more than 1k lines.

But, lately I've been thinking about converting to vim family. Vim is what I like in real life - quick (way faster than emacs), not-bloated (still in MBs) and above all cool features. In retrospect, emacs seem to be developed as really bloated thing, include all, nasty to use keyboard shortcuts (although I have replaced all of them with my custom settings).. things that you expect to get on your 10GB windows vista (RMS, pls pardon me for this insane comparison).

OTOH, vim has a taste of elegance, at least in default keyboard shortcuts.. that are rarely longer than 3-4 char. Looks like the developer really cared for what user really needed rather than stuffing everything down the throat. But, my tipping point was vim7.0's "time undo feature" -- something like you tell ":earlier 5m" and it'll take you (or rather your file) 5 minutes back in time. I'm sure I can do same thing in emacs after spending 2 hours on google and adding 10 more lines to .emacs but the joy is not there.

So, here I am in middle of my biggest decision of my life - should I continue emacs, where I am a power user or should I join enemy's camp.

PS: emacs users, pls dont kill me.. I have not YET switched and still visit emacs church. Vim user, you dont kill me either for I am your potential convert. Thanks!

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we still compare Apples to computer systems? :-)

*ducks*

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to ruin the implied humour.

I hadn't even noticed

[iamthelinuxguy]

I've been happily using emacs for the past 9 years. I haven't been holding my breath waiting for the next release because frankly it does everything I need it to do and it does an outstanding job.

For years I've been watching this vi vs emacs debate pop-up here and there. It's slightly amusing and I really think most people aren't that seriously religious about it (at least I hope not). I took the time several years ago to learn vi, since I do Linux consulting and vi is always available no matter where I log in. I like it just fine. The one thing that keeps me from moving to it as my primary editor is dired. I can't live without it. It's so easy to open up the whole directory in Emacs and jump from file-to-file within the editor. I know vi (or is it vim?) has a pseudo dired like mode you can use, but it just doesn't quite feel as smooth - Most likely because I'm just so used to Emacs. Anyway, it's great to see that Emacs is still in active development. Perhaps I will find some great new thing I can do with it.

Re:I hadn't even noticed

[Anonymous Coward]

I frequently take part in Emacs versus Vim flamew^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussions. The reason being, I find it very funy and amusing. It is not a religion.

I very, very much hope that most of people that take part in those flamew^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussions do it for the same reasons You do it.

By the way.
I thought that dired mode was perfect. And then my coworker demonstrated to me during a "big Vim versus Xemacs showoff" :e .
command ...
Now I use Vim ;-)
What I REALLY love is the autocompletition of filenames and paths through shortcut. Awesome for writting scripts.

But I still admire the beauty of XEmacs (especially calc mode).

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[eln]

Vimacs is an affront to God...using it may very well bring about the Apocalypse. It's like what would happen if God came down to hang out with you for a while and you stole his wallet or coveted his ass or something: bad things are going to happen.

I'll live with it all if......

[OutOnARock]

someone, anyone, can make it look and feel like Eclipse, but with EMACS macros!
That I would love.

Re:I'll live with it all if......

[Anonymous Coward]

I detect a hint of masochism.

Re:I'll live with it all if......

[HappyEngineer]

Can someone give me a comparison between emacs and a modern ide like Eclipse? I'm one of those people who tried emacs once years ago (about 10 years ago), but couldn't figure out how to do anything or even how to exit it, so I switched to another terminal and killed it.

People always talk about vi/vim vs emacs, but it has never been clear to me if we're just talking about a text editor or if people actually use vi/vim and emacs as full IDEs.

Do they do things that modern IDEs do like:
- let you ctrl-click on a class name to jump to the class
- compile and highlight errors as you type
- respond with method names when you hit ctrl-space after a variable name
- show the parameters of a method as you fill them in
- show method documentation when you hover over a method name

Or, are they mostly intended to be for ultra quick lightweight text editing?

I use vim for editing config files when connected to *nix machines over ssh connections. But, locally, I can't imagine using vim for real work. I'm just wondering if there are aspects of these tools which are far more advanced than I'm aware of. People seem to get so excited about the whole vi/emacs thing that I just wonder what it is that I'm missing.

Re:I'll live with it all if......

[grumbel]

### let you ctrl-click on a class name to jump to the class

Yes, if you generated etags/ebrowse files before.

### compile and highlight errors as you type

When you compile, you can click on the output to jump to the files with errors.

### respond with method names when you hit ctrl-space after a variable name
### show the parameters of a method as you fill them in
### show method documentation when you hover over a method name

Don't think so, but there might be some extension for that floating around.

### Or, are they mostly intended to be for ultra quick lightweight text editing?

Definitively not just lightweight text editing, but on the other side I don't think it can keep up with a full IDE, neither in terms of features nor ease of use. I think the main benefit of Emacs is that it isn't just a IDE, it can do plenty of IDE like stuff, but you can also use it to write your LaTeX documents, your HTML pages, your XML documents, read your email and all kinds of things. It might not be the perfect solution, but its a reasonably good one for many things.

Re:I'll live with it all if......

[Abcd1234]

But, locally, I can't imagine using vim for real work.

It all comes down to developer habits. I never became dependant on all those autocompletion features (and I'm considered one of the fastest devs in the office), and while I admit they are nice (emacs and vim both support a subset of what you describe, but I rarely those features), the price paid for those massive, bloated IDEs can be extremely painful at times. Hell, just waiting for VS to do... well... practically anything, can be irritating, especially if you're used to the snappiness of an editor like Vim.

So, absolutely, people use them as their primary development environment. But it doesn't sound like *you* should.

Re:I'll live with it all if......

[sashang]

Vim has an auto-complete mechanism but it's not as sophisticated as what you get with VStudio. For example if it won't do context sensitive variable name completion (i.e. display the name of the member function of a variable after the dot or -> operator). No compile and highlight errors as you type No parameters of method names as you fill them in However judging from your post you seem to be describing a language centric IDE, an IDE that caters for a few languages well. I work on embedded systems and there is no windowing system. All I have is an ssh connection and a terminal. I use Vim for development because it lets me work anywhere and can handle all sorts of languages (Bash Python, C/C++). Could I do what I do with a conventional IDE style editor? Yes for a specific language, but then I'd have to be scping my changes over to the target box. Using Vim on the target box saves me the scping step. Some of my colleagues use IDE's to do their programming but when they have no other option and have to ssh into a machine to edit/compile/run there are not may options other than Vim or Emacs. Case in point was when diagnosing a box at Homeland Security from a remote location. Knowing how to use Vim was highly useful in that case. Being able to use Vim or Emacs over an ssh connection is probably the biggest benefit you can leverage out of those editors.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[alienmole]

PS: emacs users, pls dont kill me.. I have not YET switched and still visit emacs church. Vim user, you dont kill me either for I am your potential convert. Thanks!

Too late - to paraphrase Agent Smith, you're already dead. If you decide to switch, emacs users will kill you. If you don't decide to switch, vi users will kill you. One of your lives had a future, but for some reason, you opened your mouth and picked the one that does not. Goodbye, Mr. NovaSupreme.

Ahh yes but does it...

[pjr.cc]

Plug into visual studio(c) like VIM does?

Or alternatively, can we blame emacs for all the MS patent violations in the OSS comunity. Im sure MS has a patent somewhere that states:

"a method for inputting ASCII text via an input device for later storage onto long-term or short-term physical media". Notepad, an invention worthy of Albert E himself.

Maybe they even have one like "a method for controlling storage media, physical input devices, display terminals, pointing devices and misc peripheral equipment for human use", though im not sure MS would really be willing to claim they actually invented windows (you'd be embaressed if you did right?).

Consume 1 grain of salt for each word in the above as it was my bad attempt at humor ;)

Re:Ahh yes but does it...

[Tweekster]

I never understood why anyone would want vim/emacs in VS.

the intelligent autocompletion is vastly superior to anything vim/emacs has (atleast as of a year or two ago)

Re:Ahh yes but does it...

[Abcd1234]

You're assuming everyone is willing to trade off the features vim/emacs provides for intelligent autocompletion. I know I'm on the fence...

Re:Ahh yes but does it...

[ravenlock]

You're assuming it has to be a trade. It doesn't: vi-vim emulation for Visual Studio.

I'm a happy man these days, with VS IntelliSense, ReSharper refactorings and Vim modal editing. :)

Notepad? Better unicode support?

[MarkByers]

this app can break

Re:Notepad? Better unicode support?

[Lehk228]

loldongs

Duke Nukem Forever?

[erroneus]

Is this any indication of when Duke Nukem Forever might be released?

Re:Duke Nukem Forever?

[fahrbot-bot]

Is this any indication of when Duke Nukem Forever might be released?

I believe it's been integrated into the build: ESC-8 ESC-X duke-nukem

text editor, not word processor

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not the same thing, in much the same way that a pigeon and a bat aren't the same thing, despite the fact that they both can fly.

Re:text editor, not word processor

[Anonymous Coward]

See that object flying above your head? Look closely, can you see what it is yet? YES! That's it, a joke!

Re:Already done

[Crimsonjade]

emacs-22 includes tramp by default.

The Website, RMSes Passport Portrait, Emacs ...

[Qbertino]

The Website, RMSes Passport Portrait, Emacs itself, ... just looking at it makes it appear beyond bizar. As if I had taken some extremely mind altering substance. I couldn't describe the experience to someone who hasn't had it himself.
Emacs may once have been an extremely powerfull tool and the best possible thing for a remote tty command line mainframe uplink some 25 years ago. I nearly started learning it back in 1996. But all this nowadays and with a stance that is way far out even by slashdot standards ... heavens crickey.
How about calling it quits? Donald Knuth stopped TeX when it was finished. And it actually still is a usable tool today. Then again, Donald Knuth is a normal, respected developer, not some strange fringe-dimension entity :-) .

Re:The Website, RMSes Passport Portrait, Emacs ...

[Oswald]

Er, Donald Knuth is a genius and all, and possibly the most respected man in programming, but normal? I don't think so. How eccentric is it to write all your programs (including your magnum opus) in essay/book form? Very eccentric. How odd to continue into the 21st century writing the definitive text(s) on computer science using your own made up assembly language? Pretty odd.

Would we all be better off if we learned things his way? Possibly so. But we don't and we're not going to, and I'm afraid that makes him a bit fringe-dimensional.

Re:The Website, RMSes Passport Portrait, Emacs ...

[Viol8]

"How odd to continue into the 21st century writing the definitive text(s) on computer science using your own made up assembly language?"

Not odd at all. Most computer science courses teach some form of idealised assembly language. What its trying to show is how the basic CPU components of registers , adders , shifters etc work and not have to worry about explaining the various oddities and historical baggage of a given CPU. And which assembler would you teach anyway? x86? Ok , and which syntax version , Intel or GNU? 16 bit or 32 bit? What Knuth does makes perfect sense.

Re:The Website, RMSes Passport Portrait, Emacs ...

[Oswald]

odd (d)
adj., odder, oddest.
1. Deviating from what is ordinary, usual, or expected; strange or peculiar: an odd name; odd behavior. See synonyms at strange.

I said odd: not stupid, pointless or even suboptimal, but odd. Go to an online book store and look at the lesser texts on the subject. Virtually all use some higher-level language like C or C++, or even Java (!) for their examples and exercises.

I wasn't criticizing Knuth. He's certainly smarter than I am. I was arguing that his books are not ordinary, usual, or expected (of most authors).

Re:The Website, RMSes Passport Portrait, Emacs ...

[Viol8]

"Deviating from what is ordinary, usual, or expected; strange or peculiar:"

Well on my comp sci course I was taught a made up assembler (not Knuths) and lots of other British universities (proper uni's not some college on steriods who think Java is the 2nd coming) do too, so I guess we'll just have to differ on what we see as odd. To me its the standard method used.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[poor_boi]

I love vim. vi is ok. vim is great.

vim is an editor that can be used as an ide. Emacs is an ide that can be used as an editor.

I can honestly recommend vim for use on every platform it supports, which is pretty much all of them, including amiga.

The only warning I would give is: bring patience with you. vi and vim do not become powerful until you become proficient at the keyboard commands, the modal system, and the command line commands. vim has a menuing system, but if you are a menu-only type of guy, why subject yourself to a new set of menus?

If you do not love and believe in vi's modal editing enough to learn it, use another editor.

pb

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[Russellkhan]

Viper is far superior to Vimacs! (A new kind of flame war, whee!)

In all seriousness, I have never tried Vimacs (I don't think I'd actually heard of it before reading your post) and am only recently playing with Viper as a method of reacquainting myself with vi commands. No actual flame war intended, I just thought the idea of emacs-emulating-vi vs vi-emulating-emacs as a flame war was kinda funny.

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[mangu]

Yes, and also King Henry of England. Okay, RMS, now who has ever heard of a king Henry Emacs?

short review

[Frank Grimes]

In addition to reading the article, I downloaded the source and compiled it. The text in the GUI is STILL not anti-aliased. It's just as ugly as Emacs 21.

Re:short review

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just as ugly as Emacs 21.

Only if you're using a sucky font.

Eight Megs Is Nothing Nowadays

[russotto]

So how many DVDs does this thing take up?

UltraEdit Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the new translation of the manual into English? We're still waiting for that one.

By the way, Ultraedit raped Emacs years ago. It does everything Emacs does, except intuitively!

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I though 98% of people now used word

Law of Software Envelopment

[slyborg]

Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment : All programs attempt to expand until they can read mail. Programs that cannot so expand are replaced by those that can.

vi's continued existence is a confusing exception to this rule.

Re:Law of Software Envelopment

[MichaelSmith]

vi's continued existence is a confusing exception to this rule.

vi /var/spool/mail/$USER

25 things to know before giving up...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've learned enough vi to get some work done, but I've never tried emacs. Is this new version any easier to figure out? The first time I had a Linux box, a knowledgeable friend set up emacs for me, but I just couldn't get it before my frustration-limit kicked in.

Easier? Probably not. It really wasn't too hard to begin with. It's more difficult to learn than gedit or notepad, but it's also a lot more powerful. The most important thing is to read through the tutorial (Ctrl+h, t) and follow the examples. Then read through the manual and practice editting a lot of text with it. You'll feel goofy for reading a text editor manual, but after a bit of practice you'll start getting the really important stuff down, like moving around and basic editting. After you get the basics down, there's still a ton of stuff to learn that can make you type a lot faster.

The hardest part is unlearning Emacs when, for whatever reason, you have to use another editor.

Re:25 things to know before giving up...

[Anonymous Coward]

The hardest part is unlearning Emacs when, for whatever reason, you have to use another editor.

I've always thought it would be funny to make C-X S mean 'clear buffer and save' in Vi.

LOL

[slyborg]

Dammit! I knew I should have fone wit hthe mod points.... +1 Funny

Ah, Emacs .....

[OneSmartFellow]

...the operating system disguised as an editor.

I love Emacs, it makes my code look clean !

Emacs, because life isn't complicated enough

Emacs is the only user application that I know of where I have to consult the documentation for the ability to shut it down.

Continuing the analogy

[Weaselmancer]

By your analogy, emacs is both a pigeon and a bat. And a bagel and a dump truck and an opera singer and a washing machine and an antelope and a tax refund form and a harpsichord and a pottery kiln.

You're so lucky

[ericferris]

My programming instructor said he had an evil boss at a government job who made him use Emacs.

You're lucky. *My* evil boss makes me edit Java and XML with Excel.

Re:You're so lucky

[k3vlar]

OH GOD. Don't even THINK that. Not only are you giving THEM ideas, but you're giving ME nightmares!

Re:You're so lucky

[jesuscyborg]

You're lucky. *My* evil boss makes me edit Java and XML with Excel.

I get this queezy feeling you're not joking.

Re:You're so lucky

[hydraulos]

You're lucky. *My* evil boss makes me edit Java and XML with Excel.

Suddenly I feel Lucky enough to buy a Lotto Ticket......

You shouldn't boot emacs right away

[ericferris]

I'd wait a bit before booting emacs. It is said that emacs is a very nice operating system, but it lacks a good editor.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Raenex]

First of all, I don't see much use in going back in time. Usually stepping through one undo at a time is what you want. Second, :blah would just be M-x blah in Emacs, if it had a "go back in time" feature, which I don't know or even care if it does. If you want to find out, you Google or "C-h a" and type in "time". If it takes you 2 hours then it would take you 2 hours to find the same thing for Vim.

md5 ?

[dougmc]

From the announcement --

The MD5 check-sum is the following:

6949df37caec2d7a2e0eee3f1b422726 emacs-22.1.tar.gz

Please send any bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org. You can use the
function M-x report-emacs-bug to do this.

Somebody needs to tell RMS that since emacs 21 came out, md5 has been cracked. Well, perhaps cracked isn't the right word, but it's not cryptographically secure anymore.

Of course, it's quite possible that RMS doesn't really care, and he's only giving us the md5sum so we can make sure it wasn't corrupted accidently somehow (as opposed to being changed and then modified to give the same md5sum.) But if that were the case, a CRC32 value would be almost as good.

Of course, I'm not sure SHA1 is that much better.

Re:md5 ?

[beyondkaoru]

i'm a whirlpool fan myself; anyway, he's probably just using md5 out of, well, tradition--he could be used to it; and tcp uses crc anyway.

Re:md5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do notice that it says "MD5 check-sum" and not "MD5 cryptographically secure hash", do you?

Re:md5 ?

[dougmc]

i'm a whirlpool fan myself; anyway, he's probably just using md5 out of, well, tradition--he could be used to it Yes, he's probably using md5 out of tradition -- but it's a tradition that needs to go. md5sums are certainly good for detecting corrupted files (as long as they were not intentionally corrupted), but do little to stop actual crackers anymore.

(But RMS does have or did have some non-mainstream ideas about computer security and access and such, and while I don't think he'd want his software compromised and yet passed off as unchanged, it's possible that he might not really mind.)

; and tcp uses crc anyway. Of course. But that's only one of many many ways that a file can be corrupted or changed from the original version. The Internet may be the #1 way for getting GNU software out nowadays, but it's still not the only one. People don't post it via shar files to Usenet anymore, or email it in chunks via UUCP, but there's still plenty of ways for a file to be corrupted, either in transit or even sitting on your hard disk.

As for the person who marked my post as `flamebait', well, that certainly wasn't the intent. And I went ahead and told RMS (well, I submitted it to the bug-gnu-emacs address anyways.)

And as for the AC who responded saying it was a md5 check sum, not a md5 secure cryptographic hash, well, sure, but years ago, if the md5sum matched, it was considered good enough -- you had the unchanged file. If you had the md5 sum, you could safely get your file from any mirror and be sure it wasn't changed. This is not the case anymore.

If you're going to provide a hash at all, provide a good one. Or sign it with gpg or something -- that would be good as well.

in case you think its cool in a job interview...

[talledega500]

If you mention you are comfortable in emacs and VI I will not hire you.

Even Vista was faster than that

[Crazy Taco]

Geez... even a massive operating system like Vista was developed in only five years. This is a freekin' TEXT EDITOR!! SIX YEARS? What the heck???

For a vi user that's

[baomike]

like a new species of drosophila being discovered.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[massysett]

In retrospect, emacs seem to be developed as really bloated thing, include all, nasty to use keyboard shortcuts (although I have replaced all of them with my custom settings).. things that you expect to get on your 10GB windows vista (RMS, pls pardon me for this insane comparison).

OTOH, vim has a taste of elegance, at least in default keyboard shortcuts

That is interesting because I see things in the opposite way.

I have been using vim pretty much since I started using Linux a few years ago. My use is limited to some elementary programming (see sig) some long XML documents, config file editing and, more recently, email in Mutt. I'd say my Vim knowledge is pretty elementary, and I am learning new things all the time.

When I first used Linux, I wanted to learn Emacs. Vi has a reputation of being mean and unfriendly. But something about Emacs just wasn't clicking with me, while the Vim tutorial was easy to follow. The commands were cryptic at first, but I soon realized how quickly I could get around a file with them, even with just rudimentary knowledge.

Every so often I take another look at Emacs. Most recently it was because shells seem to work better with Emacs key bindings (they usually have vi bindings, but I don't find they work as well at the command line.) I figured that if I was going to learn Emacs bindings, I might as well take another look at Emacs.

My most recent impression of Emacs is that the basics of the editor are much more well-designed and integrated than Vim. Vim is descended from Vi, which is descended from Ex, which comes from Ed...so there is a lot of editor history and cruft and weirdness in there. Recently I've been digging through the Ex and Ed manpages, which helps me understand Vim better. But yikes, that old line-editor history is still deeply in Vim, and it is very apt to say that the the visual part of Vim is "bolted on" to Ex.

Emacs on the other hand does not seem to have this crazy history. It seems to do many things smoothly that were later added to Vim, such as editing multiple buffers. Basic functionality like searching is easier to understand--Vim's distinction between "magic" and "nomagic", for example, took awhile for me to understand (of course, it exists in part due to compatibility with the ancient regular expressions found in Ed.)

In short, the core of Emacs seems to me to be designed, while the core of Vim seems haphazard and bolted together like a historical crazy quilt.

However, where this changes is with more advanced functionality. Features such as folding and (more recently) spell checking are built in to Vim. Emacs can do these things, sure. But you have to rely on modes. Good luck finding modes and then, if you find them, good luck documenting them. Furthermore, it often seems that doing something more advanced with Emacs requires learning Emacs Lisp, where the functionality will be built-in to Vim. I don't want to have to learn to program my editor just so I can smoothly edit a file.

So, the core of Emacs seems to me to be better designed, while when it comes to more advanced functionality, Vim wins. So Vim is harder to learn, but easier to use and grow with once you get the hang of it.

A couple of final notes. Vim's documentation is much better than Emacs. Bram has done a fantastic job by writing two manuals--the user guide, to get you started, and the reference manual to exhaustively explain everything. Emacs has only one manual. Further, Bram has documented all of Vim, including the advanced functionality. Since the advanced stuff is not built in to Emacs--it uses modes instead--good luck getting good documentation to go along with advanced Emacs usage.

Also, some people compare Emacs and vi. That is an easy contest--Emacs wins hands down. I installed nvi just to see what it would be like, and the lack of documentation alone makes it very hard to use. Thus emacs versus vi is a bogus comparison. Vim is the standard bearer now.

Just my $.02; I hope an Emacs user offers a refutation.

anti-aliased fonts work fine with emacs

[r00t]

If you run emacs in a gnome-terminal, you get the anti-aliased fonts. Start gnome terminal, run "unset DISPLAY", and be happy.

(IMHO the 6x13 xterm font called "fixed" beats any anti-aliased mush, but to each their own!)

Re:anti-aliased fonts work fine with emacs

[HeroreV]

That makes sense. I already knew the GUIs for Emacs were extremely shitty, so I guess this really doesn't change how I feel about Emacs.

I still don't understand why anyone would want to run an interactive program inside a terminal though.

well, emacs comes with vi

[r00t]

Uh, I'm not kidding. Stuff this in your .emacs file:

(setq term-setup-hook 'vip-mode)
(global-unset-key "\e\e")
(put 'eval-expression 'disabled nil)

Re:well, emacs comes with vi

[Weaselmancer]

That's just flat-out perverted. Best laugh I've had all day. =)

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Dan Ost]

Once you've learned the power of ex, vim will stop feeling like a bi-modal interface "bolted" on top of ex and will instead feel like a tri-modal editor. Once you make that leap, you'll never want to go back to anything else.

Autocompletion ala Visual studio

[Tweekster]

I know there was some efforts being made in autocompletion capabilities but how far has it come. I mean REAL autocompletion, intelligent completion...ie not tags.

C-u

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

C-u is one of the most important prefix command keys. It's not just "repeat n times" (which is really damn important, BTW), but also, more generally, "run the next command in a slightly different way." For example, M-x shell gets you shell-mode with a buffer called *shell*; if the buffer already exists, it switches to it. C-u M-x shell, on other hand, prompts you for a buffer name. You need to use C-u M-X if you want to have multiple shell buffers.

Re:C-u

[belg4mit]

Meh. Still not as important as C-a. And what's everyone's fascination with M-x shell? Emacs is a great editor,
but a fucking terrible terminal emulator. Then again, I never bought into rmail either.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[Anonymous Coward]

Another great emacs feature is to be able to mark rectangles of text that cut across lines.

Ctrl-Spacebar sets the first mark, then move the cursor to the diagonal opposite corner of the rectangle you want to copy, and press "Ctrl-x r k", and you've marked the rectangle and can cut or copy it.

You can manually dedent a block of code with this feature, or remove the many lines of >>>>> from a forwarded message.

Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[ChaosDiscord]

Are Emacs and Vi even worth learning for the next generation? I say this as a fan of Vim who uses it for all his text editing; and many of my coworkers are Vim or Emacs fans. Both are exceptionally powerful tools. But neither program is especially user friendly, and other editors and IDE seem to be catching up in terms of power. It's perfectly possible to achieve mastery and speed in more user friendly tools as well. (I know a guy who uses Visual Studio's editor with the fluidity I normally only see in Vim or Emacs users, almost never removing his fingers from the keyboard. He works almost entirely on muscle memory so his editor is almost a direct extension of his thoughts.)

Much though I love Vim and look forward to new releases, as I expect the Emacs fans do, I suspect our favorite editors are going to be increasingly marginalized. I can't in good faith suggest that younger programmers spend the time to learn either one. (Excepting of course people working on Unix, where you should know enough pure-Vi to muddle along in a worst case scenario.)

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[Amit J. Patel]

I think it depends a lot on how many systems you use, both now and in the future, and also your rate of learning.

If I'm a new Java programmer I'll probably get more out of Eclipse than vi or Emacs; if I'm using Windows I might get more out of Visual Studio than vi or Emacs. But that's just in the short term. In the long term, the language and operating system might change, but the need to work on text files is likely to still be there. If I'm using multiple languages or OSes now, or if I expect that I'll be using different languages or OSes in the future, it means I'm likely to change IDEs. Each time I change, I'm learning from scratch. This means I don't get more than a decade of becoming an expert with one editor; instead I learn the most common tasks but not the advanced features.

With vi(m) or Emacs, I get something that's not optimized (specialized) for one environment, but instead something that's general-purpose and adapts to many different systems, and I can carry what I learn from one system to the next. I've been using vi and Emacs on Solaris, OS/2, Linux, Windows, Mac, with C, Scheme, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, SML, and many other languages. I could've used Visual Age on OS/2, but most of what I learned would not have been that useful when I switched to Eclipse on Linux, and most of that would not be useful when I switched to Visual Studio on Windows, and most of that would not be useful when I switched to XCode on Mac. Instead, I'm using a tool that's less optimal for my current needs, but it's something that I can keep using for other needs.

It extends beyond programming to my editing of text files, email, messages for newsgroups, HTML, my diary, my calendar, blogs, XML, config files, etc. Do you use Visual Studio for editing your blog, or do you use a different editor? Do you use yet a different editor for HTML? For email? I think it's a reasonable way to go but I find that I only use the simplest editing functions when I use lots of editors, because I can't count on features being available as I switch from one context to another.

It's a tradeoff, and I don't know for sure whether it's better to be a novice with specialized tools or an expert with a single general-purpose tool. I'd consider vi(m) and/or Emacs if you're editing a whole lot and expect to be editing on many different systems, languages, etc. I'd stick to IDEs if you're using one system a lot and don't expect to switch often, or if you don't edit enough that there's any benefit to learning vi(m) or Emacs.

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[greengearbox]

I used emacs "professionally" as my main development editor for, mmmmm, about 15 years. It's funny: perhaps my first encounter with an "integrated" development environment was an emacs mode which prettified gdb. ISTR a Sun tool as well whicih used emacs as its editor widget. I wrote C, C++, perl, and finally Java, and although I'd try IDEs as they came out they never quite fit the bill for me. This included earlier versions of Eclipse.

But I've finally made the switch to eclipse, and while I miss (or have yet to discover equivalents for) many of the shortcuts, I don't think I'd recommend emacs for Java development any longer. And in the Windows world, I don't think emacs can be seriously considered as an alternative to something like VS.

For text munging, on the other hand, I continue to use emacs. There are, off the top of my head, three features that I've never seen anywhere else. The first is "kill-rectangle". I sometimes am given a lage log file with say 50k lines like

[THE DATE IS HERE] [CODE DESCRIPTOR] [LOG LEVEL] [OTHER CRAP] --- interesting bits.
[THE DATE IS HERE] [CODE DESCRIPTOR] [LOG LEVEL] [OTHER CRAP] --- more interesting bits.

I want to do some automated munging on the interesting bits, but it's inconvenient having all the other crap. picture the entire contents of the file: the other crap forms a "rectangle" in the buffer. I can easily select and kill that rectangle, leaving a buffer with only the interesting bits.

of course, I could also write a regexp to filter out the crap, but why bother? I can kill-rectangle in about 5 keystrokes.

Another cool feature is "adaptive fill" mode. This was very handy back when I composed my mail in emacs. It's a line splitting algorithm which is sensitive to "list" indentation. Slashdot wil eat my formatting, but the idea is that after a line break in what emacs thinks is a list element (or any other block of text that it thinks should be intended differently) it'll indent the line "correctly". It's a minor thing, but it's strange how I miss it.

Finally, macros. Again, I have a 50k line file, and I want to apply some operation to each line. But I may not know at first exactly what operation I want to perform. So I start recording a macro, take a whack at the first line. Repeat, until I get the operation down right. Then I can apply the macro say 10 times, just to be sure. Then I run it through the rest of the buffer. I'm sure vim (etc.) have a similar feature, but at this point the emacs keystrokes are so embedded in my fingers that I do this w/o having to think about it.

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[dbIII]

They are available everywhere - so yes. It's surpising to find large commercial *nix applications with emacs key bindings in the input feilds. You really only have two choices of what to use to remove a dozen lines from a yet unknown location in a 2GB file on a machine with 256MB of memory and maybe even a Microsoft operating system - these editors are useful.

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[antime]

I first used rectangular selections in Semware's Qedit on MS-DOS sometime in the late 80s/early 90s. It's a standard editor feature nowadays.

"Adpative fill" is called "smart indenting" in most other editors. Also pretty common.

Recorded macros have also been around forever. If you haven't seen these features in other editors it's probably because you've never tried anything else. Having the commands burned into your brainstem is a perfectly OK reason for you not to switch, but I see no reason for anyone to start using Emacs now as there are many alternatives with all the features that are far less user-hostile.

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[bytesex]

Plus that the binding of an IDE to a language or language-version is really one element of a range of product-binding: some development tools are sold as products, the source files of which can *only* be edited through a special proprietary tool.

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[Abcd1234]

I can't in good faith suggest that younger programmers spend the time to learn either one.

Why not? It's just another skill. And if it turns out to improve their productivity, great. Otherwise, they've just added another tool under their belt. Win-win if you ask me.

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[shish]

I can easily select and kill that rectangle, leaving a buffer with only the interesting bits.

In vim, Ctrl-V for block select, Delete (or x) to snip it out. Also you can then paste a block as a block elsewhere~

Re:Is it worth learning for the next generation?

[Alan Shutko]

Sadly, Eclipse doesn't have any of those features that I can find...

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Never used the time features in Vi, but consider how many times you've undid and redid changes and want to go back to something you undid before you've redid something and realize that you're now really confused... it might be better to get time-based snapshots of the text to go back to. If only somebody could let me in on how they remember all these damn commands and keystrokes...

Thank God...

[DollyTheSheep]

... it wasn't: Emacs 6 released after 22 year wait.

If it only had Visual Studio keyboard mode...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just kidding =)

I can barely contain my anticipation

[Anonymous Coward]

Six years ago Emacs was already a bit of a passed station. It was not bad, but it wasn't very user friendly, and even after the steep learning curve it doesn't allow you to work substantially more efficient. As the years slowly crawled by rival editors became better and better and better. And now version 22 is released. It contains no important features not found in it's rivals, and the worst part is... it's still Emacs. If the developers are really doing what they do because they want to make the world a better place, perhaps they should have supported another project with the fruits of their labour.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

vim is an editor that can be used as an ide. Emacs is an ide that can be used as an editor.

QFT. This is the most insightful comment in the history of the vim/emacs flamewar.

A simple patch in the matrix will solve this!

[freaker_TuC]

I just sent out Neo to get that :q! job done!

Emacs is modular

[yankpop]

I don't think it did, really. It only looks like that because it is so readily extended. If you compare Emacs to ed or vi or similar, it's going to look very complex and bloaty. But the better comparison is probably with bash.

Bash gives you a pretty basic programming language, and then you take a few Unix apps and pipe them together and you can do just about anything. Same thing with Emacs - you start with a relatively basic text editor and a solid extension language. A few decades later those basic ingredients have been sculpted by the user-community to provide a huge variety of features that rms never imagined way back when. It's exactly because elisp is simple and modular that Emacs has become so incredibly feature-rich.

If you really wanted to you could probably excise most of the extensions out of Emacs to trim it down. The fact that this hasn't happened suggests that most of us Emacs-ites appreciate having those features available, even if we only have time to learn to use a handful at a time.

yp.

Emacs has excellent documentation

[yankpop]

Emacs comes with fine tutorial, available from the help menu, or via C-h t. It comes with a complete online reference manual. A tutorial introduction to elisp, aimed at getting non-programmers up to speed wrt customizing their Emacs. And there's a two-volume set for anyone interested in serious programming in elisp. And O'Reilly has a good manual as well, if you want to pay for it.

And you definitely don't have to learn elisp to use the advanced features of Emacs. You have access to a very rich suite of editing functions with standard emacs. If you want the same (comparable, if not identical) features available with Vim? you will be just fine without knowing anything about lisp.

However, with a little time invested you can increase your productivity by customizing functions. I suppose all editors worth their salt provide regexp search and replace. But if you want to automate complicated stuff having a full extension language on hand is a huge plus. For example, I'm writing a latex document, and I want to be able to pull out all the figures/tables/footnotes to a separate file. This requires a fairly sophisticated regexp, as it has to handle nested parentheses and various options for the different environment types. I don't think it can be done with a one-line regexp. It can be done in a dozen lines of elisp, and nothing too difficult to sort out since the real heavy lifting of the regexps is already done with standard functions. Of course, I'm a rank beginner at this stuff, but I'm hooked after seeing how easy it was to make a fairly complex and useful function.

I guess that dedicated TeX editors probably already have such features built-in. But another benefit of doing this with emacs is that I don't need to learn a different interface to do similar manipulations to code, mail, html...

yp.

Re:Emacs has excellent documentation

[massysett]

As far as having to learn Elisp goes, one thing I can think of specifically is folding. Vim has this built in. That doesn't seem to be the case with Emacs. I searched Google and the best I could come up with was a bunch of Elisp. I didn't want to paste a bunch of code without having any idea how it worked.

To be fair, Emacs can do things that Vim cannot (e.g. a built-in shell, which is handy sometimes) but there are also other Emacs problems for which the solution seems to be "use this mode and paste in this Elisp code."

Re:Emacs has excellent documentation

[swillden]

s far as having to learn Elisp goes, one thing I can think of specifically is folding. Vim has this built in. That doesn't seem to be the case with Emacs.

For what language? The standard modes for C, C++, Python, Java and XML have folding.

Its Brazilian, not Brasilian

[SilveiraNeto]

My first comment here in Slashdot. I'm Brazilian, so I'm from Brazil. In this post they wrote BraSilian. That word don't exists. The correct is BraZilian.

Re:Its Brazilian, not Brasilian

[zeylisse]

> That word don't exists. The correct is BraZilian.

How much is that in metric system?

But vim has clippy

[Billly Gates]

Who can live without that!.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[jrockway]

> vim is an editor that can be used as an ide. Emacs is an ide that can be used as an editor.

That's not at all true. Emacs is a LISP environment that happens to default to running a text editor written in LISP.

Speed difference

[plasticsquirrel]

When I was still reading /. through lynx a few years ago on my 486 (no joke) running Slackware, the difference between the performance of Emacs and Vim was very significant. Vim wasn't nearly as responsive as elvis, but it was still much faster than Emacs. In fact, I scrounged up a 16MB SIMM to upgrade my RAM to a total of 24MB, and that was the only way to get Emacs to run better. But at the end of the day I had learned too many convenient Vim shortcuts.

Re:Speed difference

[grepya]

When I was still reading /. through lynx a few years ago on my 486 (no joke) running Slackware, the difference between the performance of Emacs and Vim was very significant.

I call bullshit on that. I've been using emacs for more about 14 years now. Starting with a 486 with 8 Megs of ram running a 1.x linux kernel in console mode. On those kinds of machines, emacs might have been slightly slower to initally load than vi (not vim) but once it was started, it was as snappy and responsive as anything else you could run on those machines. Even with lots of very large code files loaded in multiple buffers (fortran, if you must know ;-). Since then, every machine I've used as been successively more powerful and the mythical slowness or bloatedness of emacs has somehow NEVER manifested itself to me. Don't listen to the propaganda kids. The forces of vim are using good old fashioned FUD. And oh, I have a version of emacs (22.0.50.1) running on my old powerpc mac mini. I just measured the startup time of emacs after a cold boot -- 3 seconds. Startup time to open a new finder window -- 4 seconds. "Real" memory usage (as measured by the Activity Monitor app): Emacs - 15.85 MB, Finder (with just one active Finder window open) - 19.23 MB. There you have it.

Re:Speed difference

[plasticsquirrel]

My experiences of loading Emacs 21 on an HP Vectra 100MHz 486 must have been very different from whatever you were running. I upgraded my RAM to deal specifically with this problem, but Emacs was still slower to start up than Vim was (although it loaded reasonably well). Vim was no speed demon either, which was why I ended up using Elvis for most things. Now that I'm in the future and running on an Athlon, I can use Vim or Emacs without even noticing a startup delay. I still like both editors for different reasons, but those are my experiences, and they're not bullshit.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[swilly]

I too started as an Emacs user, then found myself wanting to learn vi. vi is quick and easy to bring up in a terminal, and is present on nearly all Unix variant machines in existence. Learning vi was not all that difficult, like Emacs there is a lot of consistency in how the various key commands combine with each other, and once you understand how it works, you find yourself just using it. And once you know the vi basics, it is really easy to pick up on the cool features in vim.

Nowadays I use both pretty regularly. I use Emacs for programming and editing large documents. I also love that its shell buffer offers improvements to other terminal programs, and not just the shell (Oracle's sqlplus within an Emacs shell buffer is much better than from a regular terminal). I use vi for quick edits or when there isn't a good mode for Emacs.

One day I caught myself alt-tabbing between an Emacs window editing C and two vim windows for lex and yacc, using all the fancy keyboard shortcuts available within each editor. It is amazing how you get so used to something that you don't even think about how to use it.

Overall, I compare the two editors by their macro capabilities. Emacs can remember long sequences of keystrokes for later recall, and if that isn't enough, you can also write LISP code to modify a buffer however you want. vim doesn't have that level of capability (and vi somewhat less), but does offer the very inconvenient "." command to repeat the last edit. This parallels how I view the two editors - I use Emacs for most serious work, and vim when I want something quick and easy.

Learn them both, you will be better off for it.

obligatory

[DeepHurtn!]

...but I hear it's still missing a text editor. :(

Re:obligatory

[micpp]

Well... it's got a vi mode.

Re:obligatory

[m50d]

I hear you can now get vi for it.

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of other editors have that, only implemented in a less annoying way ("Ctrl-x r k"? WTF!)

I don't suppose this new version of Emacs has changed the fact that the keybindings are beyond useless on anything except a US keymap? (Either you have to bend your fingers in impossible ways, or you have to figure out which key on your keyboard corresponds to a particular key in the US keymap. Because obviously everyone should know that if the program tells you to press "Ctrl-[" you should really press "Ctrl-Å" or hatever instead. Hate!)

New features

[Khashishi]

New features include:

• renders animals into bratwurst and cooks it for you
• PBX system for editing files over the phone
• generate mathematical proofs for statements such as the Goldbach conjecture
• auto-generate code for the next version of Emacs

and much, much more

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[jibjibjib]

But does it run Linux?

RMS humor

[SimHacker]

Mike Gallaher (UniPress Emacs Hacker Boss, aka "Evil Software Hoarder") and I were walking around a science fiction convention, and we ran into RMS.

Mike said "Richard, I heard a rumor that your house burnt down..."

RMS immediately replied: "Where you work, I thought you would have heard about it in advance!"

-Don

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I *have* switched to Vim.

The feature that was the final straw was:
My .emacs file was very long and full of clever hacks and yet, my XEmacs was NOT configured to my taste. It would take me many, many hours of googling, trying, debuging, going through other peoples dotemacs files to create such file from scratch.

It takes me several minutes to configure Vim EXACTLY to my taste from the "out of the box" state.
I simply type :options and use this as a checklist so I do not forget anything.

Now I can spend more time editing and less time tweaking the editor ;-)

And while Emacs has really great documentation, Vim has even better one.

Emacs analyzes RMS

[SimHacker]

RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism

[...]

RMS: I'm sure everyone on this list will be glad to know I don't plan to reproduce myself.

Doctor: How do you reconcile your inhibitions?

[...]

Ah yes, the vi editor ...

[jets42]

Clean, elegant, efficient, flexible,
(oops, I mean) cryptic, frustrating, limited, WYSI-NOT, relic from the 70's
When I first moved to unix from VAX/VMS, ( circa 1989 ) I was used to working in pure text mode with the "EDT" editor, so straight text didn't bother me...
But, that blasted 'vi' editor: [ begin rant ]
I recall thinking: What does 'vi' stand for anyway: VIolent, VIcious, VIctomize, VIcerate, VIlan, VIce-versa, VIrus, or just plain VILE !
I was used to plain-text editors that understood function keys, numeric keypad options, and would behave when you pressed the Page-Up key.
In "vi" under older SunOS, even arrow keys didn't work! Who decided that h-j-k-l should be used instead of arrows !?!? Except, of course that you had command mode, and insert mode, so when you forgot where you were, and started typing text, (while looking at the keyboard, since I'm a lousy touch typist), it really messed up your source code. And may the gods be merciful if you accidently hit the caps lock key! [ end rant ]

So, I found other software for my editor, called SEDT and was happy (for a while).
But, then I began working on dozens of different unix machines, and couldn't compile my nice new editor and install it on all of them, so I had to go back to learning 'vi' enough to survive in unix.

After a while, I noticed that working 'vi' actually got faster, and when my fingers got used to the keys, I actually had more flexibility than using the old cursor & function keys that I had been used to. (mind you, I still long for some of them)

But for most folks, I would say, keep going with 'vi' for now, and even try a few of these: clicky

As I said: Sometimes I like vi, sometimes not. On the other hand, when trying to post vi "command strings" above, slashdot's post review algorithm complained and told me

"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."

...and I had to remove the "vi" examples as 'junk characters'.
I'm thinking this says something about the occasional cryptic "vi" key combinations.

Tho other people comment: "If you want a real editor, go for emacs"
I haven't tackled that one enough to be fluent/comfortable...
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
:wq
$ exit

Logged out on Fri Jan 25 14:10:42 EST 2002

Re:Ah yes, the vi editor ...

[massysett]

In "vi" under older SunOS, even arrow keys didn't work! Who decided that h-j-k-l should be used instead of arrows !?!?

As with many bizarre bits of vi, the answer seems to be historical. Early terminals of course did not have arrow keys. The hjkl keys actually had arrows on them, so it made sense then.

Same goes for the escape key; it was where Tab is now, so it was easier to hit. (Now I find ctrl-[ easier to hit than escape.)

Re:Ah yes, the vi editor ...

[Abcd1234]

Same goes for the escape key; it was where Tab is now, so it was easier to hit. (Now I find ctrl-[ easier to hit than escape.)

I just use jj... it's on the home row so it's easy to hit, and doesn't require chording. Similarly, I use ; instead of :.

Re:Ah yes, the vi editor ...

[Anonymous Coward]

use ':x' baby, not ':wq'.

leave :wq to the lamers & imbeciles.

Re:Ah yes, the vi editor ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a little fun. Start up Emacs and try out either
M-x edt-emulation-on
or
M-X tpu-edt-on

I was the other way around; I wrote extensive TPU modifications so that EVE would honor the Emacs bindings programmed into my fingers.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Panoramix]

Funny, I've been considering switching from Emacs, too, but for different reasons. In my case, I'm worried by the GPLv3 and all that jazz. I guess I'm having second thoughts about the FSF---all that "forcing evil tivoizers" to "preserve people's freedoms" is starting to rub me the wrong way.

Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid and peculiar in my old age. I hope that's it.

But anyway, politics aside, I've been thinking, hypothetically, how hard would it be to go without GNU. Not only switching to BSD or OSX or something, but actual life without GNU at all. Worst case scenario. Oh and, as you say, I've not switched yet, I don't think things are that bad, and anyway I probably couldn't switch anytime soon, even if I really wanted to. So please don't kill me either.

Right now, there are two pieces of GNU software I absolutely can't live without: Emacs and GCC. To a lesser extent, Bash, GDB and GNU Make. Everything else is negotiable, I think.

Currently GCC can't be replaced, of course, no need to waste time on that one. But Emacs should be replaceable. My problem is nxml. Just thinking of giving up nxml gives me the creeps.

So I guess this rant is to ask, how do people edit XML in vim, or something else? Is there an alternative at all? Would I need a dedicated XML editor instead, besides the one I'd use to write code and plain text?

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[chthon]

I used VIM for years, and now I almost exclusively use Emacs (VIM for config files). I do not have much customisations, and I am learning Common Lisp, so I have no time for elisp, but Emacs lets me multitask fantastically, even in a terminal window. The way VIM handles buffers, multiple files and windows is just too awkward to be productive. And emacs shell-mode is also fantastic.

But currently, I switched to XEmacs, because it has better support under Windows and Cygwin. It compiled out of the box without patching.

If I Only Had A Hurd

[Anonymous Coward]

If I Only Had A Hurd
(The Wizard of Oz: If I Only Had...)

If the Hacker Gods beside me
Would graciously abide me
And let my wish be heard:
That I would consider shaving
I might even start behaving
If I only had a Hurd

Oh, I could tell you why
Open Source is too pragmatic and impure
Tell you things you've heard a million times before
And then I'd sit and write some more:

I'd make fun of the internals
Of monolithic kernels
Old-fashioned and absurd
Since they don't put "Gnu" before it
I'd prefer to just ignore it
If I only had a Hurd

I could maybe have a relapse
And do some work on Emacs
To make a brave Gnu/Word
I would write some manifestos
Clad in flamewar-proof asbestos
If I only had a Hurd

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[ACE209]

No - but Linux runs it - and you have not even to be in soviet Russia for this to work.

Naming and saving Emacs keyboard macros

[Per Abrahamsen]

This is from Emacs 21:

M-x name-last-kbd-macro

to give the macro a name

M-x insert-kbd-macro

to insert it as Lisp code in the current buffer.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[sunny256]

If only somebody could let me in on how they remember all these damn commands and keystrokes...

The VIM Quick Reference Card is nice. Hang it on your wall.

vi-mode for Emacs, the code

[Per Abrahamsen]

> Well... it's got a vi mode.

Here is vi-mode for emacs (with apologies to Erik Naggum):


(defun vi-mode ()
    (interactive)
    (use-global-map (make-keymap))


Whatever you do, it will just beep annoyingly at you.

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[PeterBrett]

Lots of other editors have that, only implemented in a less annoying way ("Ctrl-x r k"? WTF!)

That would be "Execute Rectangle Kill". How is that not intuitive?

vi and arrow keys

[Per Abrahamsen]

> Remember how VI couldn't handle the arrow keys before? It's come a long way, hasn't it?

Actually, no. When I first suffered vi back in the 80's, it already handled arrow keys. It relied on timing though (to distinguish the escape sequences generated by the arrow keys from a stand alone mode switching ESC), so it didn't always worked reliable when connecting over a slow line.

Emacs only got out-of-the-box support for arrow keys later (still in the 80', but later), at least on termcap terminals. I believe the X10 (and later X11) drivers supported arrow keys from the beginning. A real framework for supporting special keys on termcap terminals had to wait for Emacs 19, that is, the 90's).

Also in the news

[Chrisq]

Ford releases a seat belt kit for the model T.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[massysett]

I have been surprised at how powerful ex is as I look through the POSIX manpage. I'd definitely recommend to anybody who wants to get inside Vim that they look at the manpages for ex and ed.

Commands through the colon

[ambrosen]

Also, it's just insensitive on those of us who've had hemicolectomies.

Re:in case you think its cool in a job interview..

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that because you don't like people who are comfortable in vi or emacs, or because you don't like people who brag about it?

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[massysett]

Macros: have you tried the Normal mode "q" command? It will record keystrokes, and then you use "@" to play them back. It's handy for quick and dirty things. Also, as far as code goes, you can always throw a bunch of ex commands in a file and then :source it.

FORK....

[leuk_he]

It is a tool, GPL, used by programmers, and nobody made a fork of it in 6 year that became popular? hmm.. strange.

Re:FORK....

[Random832]

Haven't you ever heard of Xemacs? http://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html http://www.xemacs.org/About/XEmacsVsGNUemacs.html

Memory usage

[Make]

The gtk version uses twice as much memory as the standard X version of emacs22. WTF?

Comparing emacs21 and emacs22 (no gtk), the new version uses maybe 10% more memory.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[DrXym]

I've been a regular visitor to the church of Emacs and paying my weekly tribute to RMS on Sundays.

I used to use Emacs all the time but I got tired of the slow loading and superfluous functionality. So I switched to "micro" versions (jed, memacs, joe etc.). I still use jed quite a bit for editing text files, but GUI editors and IDEs provide virtually everything I could want from an editor these days for other purposes. One particularly excellent GUI editor on Windows is Notepad++. I also use Eclipse which is also pretty slow loading but once running offers superb editing facilities.

I wouldn't touch vi or emacs unless I absolutely have to. Typically that means when I'm stuck in a console window or similar. Other times, give me a decent and user friendly graphic editor any time.

Re:in case you think its cool in a job interview..

[bytesex]

If you mention you are comfortable in emacs and VI I will not hire you. Oh.

- I am intimidated now -

[big long silence]

So, how's the wife ?

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[cammoblammo]

That would be "Execute Rectangle Kill". How is that not intuitive?

I always thought Emacs was a little scary. Now I can see why!

What's this...?

[simong]

M-x M-g: Creates a local backup of Google for search purposes.

Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim sucks

gplv3 is good

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

In the tivo situation, GPLv3 ensures that everyone is free to modify the software and to run modified versions instead of the default version. This would allow Tivo users to remove the spyware that's in the default software. A Good Thing, IMO.

More info here: http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/brussels-rms-t ranscript#tivoisation

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[turing_m]

"My most recent impression of Emacs is that the basics of the editor are much more well-designed and integrated than Vim. Vim is descended from Vi, which is descended from Ex, which comes from Ed...so there is a lot of editor history and cruft and weirdness in there. Recently I've been digging through the Ex and Ed manpages, which helps me understand Vim better. But yikes, that old line-editor history is still deeply in Vim, and it is very apt to say that the the visual part of Vim is "bolted on" to Ex."

"Old" and "new" are orthogonal to "good". Much like EF Codd's ideas on databases.

I'd be hard pressed to design something more useful than vim is from the ground up. It feels as if it was designed to:
a) minimize keystroke use
b) minimize RSI
c) allow a person to predict how to use new functions intuitively (e.g. 5dd deletes 5 lines, 5Y yanks five lines)
d) edit code in general

If a person thinks that there is any chance he will be doing a fair bit of coding over a lifetime, perhaps a large chunk, it makes sense to devote a few hours in the beginning to learning an editor with the above priorities. In much the same way as a young engineer ought to consider learning RPN and buying an HP calculator. It is an investment that will pay for itself many times over.

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[ic4x0r]

especially if you're a rectangle.

Re:in case you think its cool in a job interview..

[hyperstation]

awww, did someone have trouble learning the big scary *nix text editors?

Addition to sibling's comment

[Peaker]

You can also use the functions the sibling comment suggests to create your own macro saver (I had one that saved my macros into my emacs folder in saved-macros.el).

Also, there's an emacs extension called "better-registers". Better registers allow assignment of keyboard macros into "registers". Registers are basically variables that are assigned to keyboard keys. So you can assign a macro, string, number, or whatever into a variable associated with a key, and then perform operations on that variable (increase number, run macro) via shortcut keys. Its also pretty useful for keyboard macros (as you can have an increasing number, etc inside a macro).

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the same situation as you a few months back. I ended up switching and haven't looked back. There are a few things I miss. Sometimes you end up pressing Esc every other key, and things like having a built-in shell. But for the most part, I'm quite happy.

rectangle-select?

[Anonymous Coward]

try holding alt when you drag a selection in most decent editors

Escape-Meta-Alt-Ctrl-Shift

[raw-sewage]

Either I've missed it or nobody's referenced this classic EMACS rip: EMACS stands for Escape-Meta-Alt-Ctrl-Shift.

Of course, I think EMACS versus Vi(m) really just comes down to personal preference. Some people will naturally find one more intuitive, or be more productive with, one than the other. At least with the Vim flavor of vi, EMACS and Vim (as editors and IDEs) can probably each do 95% of what the other can do, and both are extensible enough to do the remaining 5%.

Me, I'm a Vim user. I used Emacs for quite a while in college. If I took the time to learn some LISP, I think I could have a lot of fun with EMACS. But the three things that "sold" me on vim were: (1) vim loads so much faster than emacs; (2) the constant chording required by emacs was annoying; and (3) I preferred other standalone programs to emacs' integrated ones. Regarding (1), I know there is emacs server/session or whatever that allows you to attach to an already running emacs session (thus sparing you the load time). But when I last played with this, it didn't work remotely, i.e. I couldn't start emacs server locally, then remote in to my box and attach to the already running session. (Though that was years ago and I wouldn't be surprised if they've since implemented that feature.)

Regarding (3) above, it seemed a waste to me to use emacs as an editor only. If you start it up, and live in it all day, it's great (nice, cohesive environment). But for programs that need an external editor, like mutt and slrn, it just makes more sense to have one that loads quickly. Hence, vi(m) for me .

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[jacrawf]

Funny that you should mention an RPN calculator. Emacs has a really good one built into it! ;-)

Emacs certainly does have a poor reputation for points a) and b) in your list, but those are things that the Emacs developers are definitely aware of and have improved over the years. As a person who uses both Emacs and Vim quite regularly, I feel that, for the basic editing set, the two really aren't all that much different anymore. I find myself using Ctrl-KEY chords a lot more than I'd like in Vim, and once I found out that tapping the Esc key in Emacs is the same as holding down Meta, I'm doing a lot less chording in Emacs. (The secret sauce is mapping Caps Lock to Esc instead of Ctrl as Emacsers tend to want to do!) I find both editors' keybinding mnemonics to be reasonably predictable once you've gotten some experience using them as well.

Where Emacs wins big for me is in its extension language which is vastly more powerful and easy to use than Vim's. There is a reason that you can read mail, chat on IRC, and play games in Emacs: because it was easy to program! That also means that if there is some new behavior I want for editing, it is typically easy to add myself instead of waiting around for months for someone else to do it. To be sure I've done the same with Vim, and it wasn't especially hard either, but I found Vimscript to be less adept in general than elisp and considerably more inscrutable.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[UnknownSoldier]

No kidding! Fricken insightful / hilarious.

MOD up!

why is 6 years a long time for emacs?

[kwoff]

As an emacs user, I frankly couldn't care how long there is between releases of "stable" versions. Emacs is 31 years old, guys. Looking at its history, version 18 went from 1986 to 1993; version 19 was from 1993 to 1997; version 20 was 1997 to 2001. Six years is not that big of a deal, particularly since minor releases have been coming out since then.

The problem as pointed out in the article is that the release version was frozen for three years, during which time no new code could go in but the code was also not released, which was frustrating for some developers. (Again, as an emacs user, I'm playing a tiny violin.)

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Bob Uhl]

Bram has done a fantastic job by writing two manuals--the user guide, to get you started, and the reference manual to exhaustively explain everything. Emacs has only one manual.

Huh? Emacs has the tutorial (C-h t or F1 t) to get one started; it has a reference manual {C-h i m emacs or F1 i m emacs); it has a language manual (C-h i m elisp or F1 i m elisp). Then there's the documentation for any function (e.g. C-h f goto-line) or variable (e.g. C-h v global-font-lock-mode), and for the current mode (C-h m or F1 m).

Emacs is easier than vim to start out with (it's not modal in the sense that vi is), gets a little hairier for a bit, then becomes much more pleasant. Being able to extend one's writing environment is wonderful. Having a text editing environment optimised for, of all things, editing text is wonderful.

Vi, Emacs -- Please

[astra05]

I have been using nano now forever. Keyboard shortcuts, hahahaha. And when I am feel really crazy I use NetBeans

I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs on Windows, 22 buffers open including a zip file:
63Mb according to Windows task manager.

Slightly more than Outlook, slightly less than Explorer.exe.
<cough>Half as much as Firefox</cough>
Four times as much as Word (3 documents open).

Nano

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't decide between the complexity of emacs and the counterintuitiveness of vi? Try GNU nano! Now with built-in Unicode support!

Re:Cue the vi versus emacs flamewars

[Bongo Bill]

...emulating-emacs-emulating-vi-emulating-emacs-em ulating-vi-emulating...

Emacs and data structures

[tjwhaynes]

While I have programed with Emacs in the past, I now use IDE's All the time. they are useful, they show me alternative views of my data structures, they correct my spelling mistakes, they warn me of errors before they happen. they make helpful suggestions. In short they make my job easier.

Obviously you are unaware that Emacs can do all these things for you as well - such as the Semantic libraries for understanding your code, Speedbar for navigating your code and the fabulous JDEE environment with the beanshell backend that speeds up your Java compiling sessions.

The same is true for C/C++ development - in cases where Emacs does not provide direct lookup, I have tools like Cscope integrated into my Emacs sessions for speedy code traversal. Version control is built right into the Emacs sessions, including awareness of the current state of a file. Simple things like quick-access menus allowing you to jump directly to a function and the almost infinitely configurable "expand this thing" (hippie-expand!).

Remember - there is very little that Emacs can't do. You are limited only by your knowledge of how to expand what it provides by default.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Re:Emacs and data structures

[hswerdfe]

you make my point for me.
I have been told many times the virtues of emacs. I have been told that it does all my IDE does and buys my lunch also. But you know what, I don't know how to use it beyond a point, and unless I invest lots of time in it I never will.
These "Icon factories", often make it easier to discover these features. making me a more efficient programmer.

and yes I am good at what I do (But that is just an opinion I suppose).

Re:Emacs and data structures

[tjwhaynes]

I have been told many times the virtues of emacs. I have been told that it does all my IDE does and buys my lunch also. But you know what, I don't know how to use it beyond a point, and unless I invest lots of time in it I never will.

That's one of those trade-off scenarios. Invest the time to learn what Emacs can do for you now and be more productive later or use an "Icon factory" IDE which gives you a pretty decent collection of tools but is ultimately limited in what it can do for you.

I personally think that the balance depends on whether either you or some colleague likes coding in LISP - if you have someone on your team who knows Emacs backwards, your team will be able to package all that Emacs can provide in an easy-to-consume setup. If not, then you may still find Emacs a reasonably capable editor but you won't be exposed to Emacs in its most effective form.

I support Emacs for a fair number of developers so you could say I am biased!

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Re:Emacs and data structures

[Em Adespoton]

if you have someone on your team who knows Emacs backwards, your team will be able to package all that Emacs can provide in an easy-to-consume setup.

Emacs backwards... that would be SCAMe, right?

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[YouMakeMeSoANGRY]

Emacs shortcuts on a Sun keyboard are great. Switch to another platform where CTRL is moved and META is lost and you either remap your keyboard or develop RSI. VIM still rules though - if only because it allows you to say "Ugh, if can't manage the RAW POWER OF VIM I'll put it in easy mode for you."

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Rewbob]

If you are looking for the '.' command to repeat the last edit in Emacs... then check out dot-mode.el. It gives you Ctrl-. that does the same thing.

http://www.wyrick.org/source/elisp/dot-mode/index. html

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[jgrahn]

Vim is what I like in real life - quick (way faster than emacs), not-bloated (still in MBs)

Accusing either of them of being slow or bloated, today, is silly. They're both tiny speed monsters compared to the bloatware everyone seems to run (Gnome, KDE, Firefox, bloody Eclipse ...)

Beware the dark side.

[dingbatdr]

Once you go to the dark side, forever will it dominate your destiny.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

My name ...is VIGOR!


(Don't get it? Try here after returning your geek ID)

Re:Another keyboard shortcut

[Anonymous Coward]

Well played, sir or madam! :) If only the mods had seen fit to grace your post with more points!

OS releases, tags and usability

[bensch128]

It's good to know that GNU is releasing it's newest OS to compete with Vista, MacOSX and Feisty...

Really though, I was a emacs user but since using slickedit, I haven't found emacs to be quite as satifying.
I mean, I get the same key bindings and workflows as emacs but there's so much more out of the box that's usable.
The tagging support and customization helper dialogs come to mind immediately.

Also, if its a simple text file I want to edit nowadays, I use kate instead.
WYSIWYG is easier on the brain in these cases...

Cheers
Ben

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I use nedit. It has all the features I need. Standard short cuts like ctrl s to save documents etc. There is no learning curve. Why spend time to learn how to use a text editor. To me learning vi, emacs, or any other text editor simply seems a complete waste of time.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[jrockway]

It is a LISP execution environment, not an OS. Please learn something about computers before posting.

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

It is a LISP execution environment, not an OS. Please learn something about computers before posting.

Joke----->

0 ---you
/|\
/ \

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Corwn of Amber]

It is a Lisp environment Grub can boot to. You don't really need Linux. Oh yes, you do, but, I mean, you don't need actually more than Emacs, the GNU toolchain, *some* kernel, and bash. (Hey, wait ... Maybe The GNU Project has ended up producing a full-blown OS with tons of utilities ans useless bells'n whistles. After all.)

And they really need a HURD ...

(I should not post when THAT stoned)

Re:Nobody Cares. - my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't emacs like Islam? You convert away under pain of death.