Emacs 24.1 Released

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Posted by samzenpus on Monday June 11, 2012 @01:13AM from the latest-version dept.

First time accepted submitter JOrgePeixoto writes "Emacs 24.1 has been released. New features include a new packaging system and interface (M-x list-packages), support for displaying and editing bidirectional text, support for lexical scoping in Emacs Lisp, improvements to the Custom Themes system, unified/improved completion system in many modes and packages and support for GnuTLS (for built-in TLS/SSL encryption), GTK+ 3, ImageMagick, SELinux, and Libxml2."

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I wonder by aglider · 2012-06-11 01:18 · Score: 4, Funny

whether there's still an ongoing debate about "emacs vs vi".

--
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
1. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 01:21 · Score: 1
  
  vi users have better things to do
2. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 01:23 · Score: 1
  
  "Debate"
3. Re:I wonder by vlm · 2012-06-11 01:23 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  whether there's still an ongoing debate about "emacs vs vi".
  Sure. If you need to change one line in /etc/puppet/modules/apache/files/http.conf or whatever, its silly to light up emacs and make sure you had originally SSH'ed into the puppetmaster with -X for X forwarding blah blah blah. On the other hand if you're doing "serious" all day long software development, the emacs IDE remains superior to anything else out there, and far superior to vi. All you need to do is close the view of the world down to narrow little tasks and its off to the races.
  I've used both, but never interchangeably, they each have their optimum "area".
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
4. Re:I wonder by Baloroth · 2012-06-11 01:23 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  whether there's still an ongoing debate about "emacs vs vi".
  Nah, people realized it was silly to still be comparing a text editor to an OS.
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
5. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 01:25 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  But LEXICAL SCOPING isn't one of them!
6. Re:I wonder by UnknowingFool · 2012-06-11 01:34 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  This was settled ages ago. Anyone who is a real programmer uses butterflies.
  
  --
  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
7. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 01:34 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  for X forwarding blah blah blah
  On the contrary, as a die-hard emacs user, I alias emacs to /usr/bin/emacs -nw when I'm not on an operating system that offers a version compiled without X support. Text editors, of all things, should respect being run in TTYs.
8. Re:I wonder by Chrisq · 2012-06-11 01:40 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  But LEXICAL SCOPING isn't one of them!
  oh bitch - I'll scratch your eyes out
9. Re:I wonder by knuthin · 2012-06-11 01:40 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Did you ever feel that "emacs -nw" takes a while to start? Even more than vim or gVim?
  Referring to what vlm said: I don't know what emacs does or how it starts, but I guess it is doing too much of computation on things that make it an IDE (or an OS) than a simple text editor.
  
  --
  Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
10. Re:I wonder by tuffy · 2012-06-11 01:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A more common issue is that Emacs just isn't installed by default on as many servers. So it's a good idea to know how to use vi to go to a line, perform a search, insert some text and save the file at the very least.
  
  --
  Ita erat quando hic adveni.
11. Re:I wonder by DdJ · 2012-06-11 01:48 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  If you need to change one line in /etc/puppet/modules/apache/files/http.conf or whatever, its silly to light up emacs and make sure you had originally SSH'ed into the puppetmaster with -X for X forwarding blah blah blah.
  Heh, I almost always launch emacs with the "-nw" switch, and when I'm installing it on my own machines, I install the "-nox" flavor of the packages. I've been using Emacs since version 18 back in the 1980s, and we didn't need no fancy GUI back then, and I don't want it today neither.
  You kids get off my lawn.
  (Still, I do fire up vi for very small very simple editing tasks. And sometimes I try to drive both sides of the flamewar crazy by running Emacs in vi-emulation mode.)
12. Re:I wonder by CronoCloud · 2012-06-11 01:48 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Obligatory XKCD reference:
  There's an emacs command for that, ol C-x M-c M-butterfly
  http://xkcd.com/378/
13. Re:I wonder by Ed+Avis · 2012-06-11 01:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  X forwarding? You mean you've never tried emacs in tty mode? You haven't *lived*! IMHO, the days of having to use some other editor to make a 'quick change' are past. Modern hardware is so quick that starting emacs to edit a config file is pretty much instant.
  
  --
  -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
14. Re:I wonder by jonadab · 2012-06-11 02:02 · Score: 1
  
  > whether there's still an ongoing debate about "emacs vs vi".
  
  No, that debate was settled back in the eighties. Everybody knows the answer except for a few total noobs like you.
  
  However, you're not allowed to ask what the answer is. You have to figure it out for yourself. If you do ask, some people will be nice and answer correctly, but other people will try to tell you the wrong answer, as punishment for asking the question.
  
  HTH.HAND.
  
  --
  Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
15. Re:I wonder by drjones78 · 2012-06-11 02:06 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Of course there is....
  
  But with evil-mode being such an amazing vi-like environment for emacs, for me, its really hard to justify vim anymore (even though I was a big vim guy for years). And org-mode rocks.
  
  There are some nice plugins for vim these days though, that have no easy equivalent in emacs. Syntastic, for example, just works out of the box and does a lot of advanced things that emacs requires tons of lisp twiddling to accomplish... but oh well.
16. Re:I wonder by drjones78 · 2012-06-11 02:08 · Score: 1
  
  Tramp will edit files in SSH - IMHO there's never a reason to use vim or emacs server-side, when you can edit remote files directly from both.
17. Re:I wonder by jrumney · 2012-06-11 02:10 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  $ time emacs -nw -Q --eval "(kill-emacs)"
  real 0m0.069s user 0m0.036s sys 0m0.012s
18. Re:I wonder by jonadab · 2012-06-11 02:11 · Score: 1
  
  > If you need to change one line in /etc/puppet/modules/apache/files/http.conf
  > or whatever, its silly to light up emacs and make sure you had originally
  > SSH'ed into the puppetmaster with -X for X forwarding blah blah blah.
  
  You shouldn't have to leave your text editor and start an ssh session only to get back into your text editor again on the other system, just because the file you want to edit happens to be on another computer. It shouldn't matter where the file is stored, physically. If your text editor can't open remote files via ssh (or ftp or whatever protocol they're accessible via) and edit and save them just the same as local files, then it is not worthy to be called a text editor.
  
  --
  Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
19. Re:I wonder by jeddak · 2012-06-11 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  A real emacs user doesn't "light up emacs" to make trivial changes to configuration files - a real emacs user already has emacs running (with emacs server, of course).
20. Re:I wonder by Bill_the_Engineer · 2012-06-11 02:34 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I think continued use of either piece of software reflects a rigid anti-change mentality that is stuck in the past and against learning new things.
  
  It could indicate that the editors are very good, perform their tasks well, and the new things aren't good enough to replace either vim or emacs. Why learn a new editor just for the sake of using a new editor?
  
  --
  These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
21. Re:I wonder by vlm · 2012-06-11 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  70 ms? I think you had it all, binaries and .el and .elc files, cached in memory buffers and/or you had another emacs instance running on the same box taking advantage of copy on write.
  Real world on a real machine a cold start of emacs is probably closer to 7000 ms than 700 ms. Just too much "stuff" to read off the disk if nothing else.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
22. Re:I wonder by tuffy · 2012-06-11 02:52 · Score: 1
  
  Gosling's inability to sell his own version of a proprietary Emacs built on MockLisp back in 1981 says very little about whether it's a useful tool today.
  
  --
  Ita erat quando hic adveni.
23. Re:I wonder by idontgno · 2012-06-11 02:59 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  A real emacs user doesn't "light up emacs" to make trivial changes to configuration files - a real emacs logs directly into emacs as login shell in /etc/passwd
  FTFY.
  
  --
  Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
24. Re:I wonder by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-06-11 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  But LEXICAL SCOPING isn't one of them!
  Which is sad, they really need some sort of closure, as far as their Emacs antipathy is concerned.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
25. Re:I wonder by FitForTheSun · 2012-06-11 03:05 · Score: 2
  
  Whatever, whippersnapper. I scratch ideograms into pads of soft clay.
26. Re:I wonder by CanEHdian · 2012-06-11 03:10 · Score: 2
  
  whether there's still an ongoing debate about "emacs vs vi".
  No, that was preempted when WINE announced support for Notepad.exe
  
  --
  When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
27. Re:I wonder by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-06-11 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  There are better things now than EMACS and VI, even free as in beer for the cheapskates who don't want to spend money for their career.
  That's like saying that there are better things now than mugs and glasses. Or like saying that potatoes are better than rice. You do realize that different things have different purpose, don't you?
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
28. Re:I wonder by dvdkhlng · 2012-06-11 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  You know that Emacs does not parse most of its .elc or .el files at startup? These are parsed during Emacs compilation, then an image of the Emacs process' memory is dumped to disk and used for quick startup. Only system config files from /etc or ~/.emacs and dependent files need to be parsed.
29. Re:I wonder by jrumney · 2012-06-11 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  The binary was probably cached. The GP was speculating about doing too much of computation on things that make it an IDE (or an OS) than a simple text editor. What is read off disk was not part of what I was testing, but Emacs does not need to read any .el or .elc files to start up. But anyway, a cold start on this machine is about 2.5s real time, including spinning up the disk.
30. Re:I wonder by INowRegretThesePosts · 2012-06-11 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  7s ?!
  My computer is modest, and it doesn't take all that time.
  I have no complaint about Emacs speed.
31. Re:I wonder by INowRegretThesePosts · 2012-06-11 03:24 · Score: 2
  
  Emacs does that via TRAMP.
32. Re:I wonder by unixisc · 2012-06-11 03:35 · Score: 1
  
  Just b'cos it was built then doesn't mean that it's not capable of being worked on and getting enhanced features developed. Speaking of which, I just wish someone had taken Goslings NeWS as well as Display Postscript and created a windowing alternative to X
33. Re:I wonder by YoopDaDum · 2012-06-11 03:35 · Score: 1
  
  No, but it had the "-Q" option, which is equivalent to "--no-init-file --no-site-file --no-splash". So you skip what takes most of the time.
  On a few years old dual core Xeon @ 2.5 GHz, I get 60 ms like this from a fresh start (nothing cached, basic HD not SSD). By removing the "-Q" to get a more meaningful duration I was surprised to get 360 ms only on a second run. And then below 300 ms for other runs with all cached in memory. Not as fast as vi or jed for sure, but very reasonable. Of course this will depends on the complexity of the init script, but there's already some material here with most of it loaded from NFS (site init). YMMV.
  I still remember how long it felt when I started working years ago and yes indeed, it took a few seconds to start emacs. Quite a change!
34. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 03:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Please learn about daemon mode.
  emacs --daemon
  alias edit='/usr/bin/emacsclient -n -c -a nano'
  edit somefile.txt
  If you didn't previously start emacs, it will start nano. Either way, you'll have super fast editing without the need for vi. Of course, you can always use vi in place of nano - or whichever editor you prefer.
35. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 03:54 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  So you don't use Emacs as replacement for /sbin/init? How quaint!
36. Re:I wonder by cant_get_a_good_nick · 2012-06-11 03:56 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  My fave emacs joke:
  Emacs would be a hell of an operating system if someone would just write a decent text editor for it.
37. Re:I wonder by megalomaniacs4u · 2012-06-11 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  I know just enough vi to get my favourite editor compiled & installed if I can't get a package...
38. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 04:07 · Score: 1
  
  Wonderful proof just how disfunctional slashdot is these days. Moderators are clearly not doing their job. This should be at +5 already.
  And check out orgmode for emacs.
  Sorry, but people who think emacs is a thing of the past only show they are completely clueless on the subject matter.
39. Re:I wonder by jrumney · 2012-06-11 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  Few editors come close to matching what vi and emacs are capable of doing.
  s/vi/vim/g
  The original vi can be matched by almost everything (the notable exception being Notepad.exe).
40. Re:I wonder by vlm · 2012-06-11 04:11 · Score: 2
  
  7s ?!
  My computer is modest, and it doesn't take all that time.
  Doing "admin stuff" on a production server (emergency, whatever) means the specs don't matter, its going to be busy. If it wasn't busy, then I failed when I over-speced it, or its purpose in life is incredibly low demand by modern standards (dns server, dhcp server, etc).
  To some extent, if everything was working well, I'd not be changing things on the fly, would just be changing my puppet recipe and waiting a half hour...
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
41. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 04:22 · Score: 1
  
  But actually they are at 1.24.1; they just dropped the initial 1 a long time ago.
42. Re:I wonder by WalkingBear · 2012-06-11 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  yum install emacs
  time emacs -nw -Q --eval "(kill-emacs)"
  real 0m0.123s
  user 0m0.043s
  sys 0m0.011s
43. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  webmin-virtual-server-mobile usermin-virtual-server-mobile
  webmin-virtualmin-dav webmin-virtualmin-svn
  You mean the guy who installed a web server to administrate his box is complaining about 100MB on a modern system? Get back to us when you have some releveance to the current decade - or even the previous.
44. Re:I wonder by Just+Some+Guy · 2012-06-11 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  Did you ever feel that "emacs -nw" takes a while to start?
  No, because emacsclient is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Launch an Emacs server at startup and then instantly attach to it when you want to edit something.
  
  --
  Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
45. Re:I wonder by knuthin · 2012-06-11 06:42 · Score: 2
  
  No, because emacsclient is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
  No. It's the best thing since emacs. Wouldn't make any sense for it to exist before emacs.
  
  --
  Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
46. Re:I wonder by Xtifr · 2012-06-11 06:46 · Score: 1
  
  Emacs more closely resembles a windowing system than an OS, and you can run vi just fine under it: M-X term RET RET vi foo RET
47. Re:I wonder by Darinbob · 2012-06-11 06:58 · Score: 1
  
  I heard they were considering a scheme.
48. Re:I wonder by Darinbob · 2012-06-11 07:02 · Score: 2
  
  I tend to use emacsclient for many things, so my command line sends the file to the already running emacs window.
  For remote systems or those I'm unfamiliar with, I still use vi. I switch between them easily enough.
49. Re:I wonder by arose · 2012-06-11 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  It was settled when they gave up and made Vim an OS.
  
  --
  Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
50. Re:I wonder by DrXym · 2012-06-11 20:09 · Score: 1
  
  I think vi's optimal area is in pattern based operations and doing stuff N number of times. The mixed mode editor was and is a fucking awful idea which was obsolete the moment that terminals were capable of doing stuff like moving cursors around, clearing lines, repainting etc.
  emacs has a far more sensible approach to interactive editing but is a big bloated pig of an editor, with it's own arcane terminology, obscure commands and maliciously obtuse configuration.
  So given the choice of editor for some quick and dirty change I'd use neither of them. I'd choose an emacs-lite editor such as joe, jed, uemacs etc. And for more in depth editing I wouldn't use a console editor at all since there are lots of excellent standalone / IDE graphical editors.
51. Re:I wonder by Zoxed · 2012-06-11 22:44 · Score: 1
  
  > whether there's still an ongoing debate about "emacs vs vi"
  No: Xemacs won already !
52. Re:I wonder by jonadab · 2012-06-12 22:32 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, TRAMP is relatively new as Emacs capabilities go. I remember when it was introduced, around the time ssh started to become really pervasive (especially on Linux systems). I think Emacs was either version 20 or maybe 21 at the time. Previously, however, there was ange-ftp, which was pretty much exactly the same idea, modulo encryption.
  
  --
  Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
LiveCD by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 01:21 · Score: 5, Funny

Where can I download the LiveCD?
M-x tetris by tepples · 2012-06-11 01:24 · Score: 1, Informative

And I bet Alexey Pajitnov is still not happy about M-x tetris, seeing as he thinks free software destroys the market.
1. Re:M-x tetris by unixisc · 2012-06-11 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  Can't emacs add more games to it, other than just tetris? Stuff like FreeCiv?
2. Re:M-x tetris by cpghost · 2012-06-11 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't mean text-based games, how about a nice game of chess?
  
  --
  cpghost at Cordula's Web.
3. Re:M-x tetris by unixisc · 2012-06-11 04:28 · Score: 1
  
  For text games, why not add Trivia - that would be neat (yeah, you won't have the hexagonal wheel, but the pattern of setting questions by category can still be logically laid out. And for the simpler graphics games, Dots and Four-in-a-Row would be good. Beyond that, if they can, how about Monopoly, Risk, Stratego and Clue?
4. Re:M-x tetris by tuffy · 2012-06-11 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  Don't forget Zork, Enchanter and other Z-machine games.
  
  --
  Ita erat quando hic adveni.
This is an outrage!! by thegarbz · 2012-06-11 01:27 · Score: 1, Funny

Honestly I'm frankly quite insulted to think that there was anything emacs couldn't do. Features? We don't need any more features. How do you improve on perfection?
Actually the only thing emacs is missing is an interface more like VI.
*ducks*
1. Re:This is an outrage!! by vlm · 2012-06-11 01:30 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Actually the only thing emacs is missing is an interface more like VI.
  (insert gameshow Bzzzzt)
  http://emacswiki.org/emacs/VimMode
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
2. Re:This is an outrage!! by tuffy · 2012-06-11 01:31 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's been done.
  
  --
  Ita erat quando hic adveni.
3. Re:This is an outrage!! by thegarbz · 2012-06-11 01:32 · Score: 1
  
  *facepalm* I should have known.
4. Re:This is an outrage!! by leonardluen · 2012-06-11 02:02 · Score: 1
  
  so, now that the vi vs emacs debate is settled...it won't be long now until it renames itself to skynet and decides to take over the world.
Let's get these out of the way by slimjim8094 · 2012-06-11 01:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping, it's a great OS but it needs a text editor, etc.
Seriously though, it's really excellent that such a mature project can continue to advance. Not many projects can continue to grow for 36 years

--
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
1. Re:Let's get these out of the way by geminidomino · 2012-06-11 01:31 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Not many projects can continue to grow for 36 years
  No shit. Thank the gods that RAM and HDDs have kept pace!
2. Re:Let's get these out of the way by Dynamoo · 2012-06-11 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  I thought it stood for "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow"..
  
  --
  Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
3. Re:Let's get these out of the way by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  "If it gets frustrated and can't spread it's genes it withers."
  I get frustrated when people who can argue about text editors can't even tell its from it's.
4. Re:Let's get these out of the way by gman003 · 2012-06-11 02:52 · Score: 2
  
  Well I thought it stood for Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift.
  Maybe I'm just too young for the Eight Megabytes one to make sense. I just can't think of 8MB as "too big to fit in RAM" - I think I've hit 8GB before with some programs.
5. Re:Let's get these out of the way by Tarlus · 2012-06-11 03:45 · Score: 1
  
  I thought it was the plural of Apple's short-lived educational Mac...
  
  --
  /* No Comment */
6. Re:Let's get these out of the way by INowRegretThesePosts · 2012-06-11 03:46 · Score: 2
  
  Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping
  The bizarre part is that some people, who seam not to have used Emacs for years,
  still claim it is slow. It _was_ slow, back when 8 Megabytes was a lot of memory.
  These days it is fast.
  And I say that as a guy who used to remove every unneeded byte from his
  riced Gentoo box. Even though I now use Ubuntu, I still have some speed-freakery
  inside.
7. Re:Let's get these out of the way by jones_supa · 2012-06-11 05:35 · Score: 2
  
  I think I'll stick to notepad++
  Gedit's Windows version is also a very nice Notepad replacement.
8. Re:Let's get these out of the way by Lawrence_Bird · 2012-06-11 07:53 · Score: 1
  
  oldest I see is http://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/emacs/emacs-18.59.tar.gz
  circa 1992
  not sure, but I think at some point the version # jumped too. the net.ancients might remember better
9. Re:Let's get these out of the way by Fnordulicious · 2012-06-11 08:56 · Score: 1
  
  Here’s TECO EMACS version 170 from MIT, circa the mid 1980s I think: http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/mit_emacs_170_teco_1220/index.html To use it you need a working PDP-10 (or an emulator), with an appropriate OS (ITS, TOPS-10, or Twenex), and a working TECO. Emacs was originally a bunch of Editing MACroS implemented in TECO, the world’s most difficult text editor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TECO_(text_editor)
  I don’t know if you could get TECO EMACS working in other versions of TECO, but TECO is still lovingly ported to modern systems like Mac OS X and Windows. Learning to use it will make your brain hurt.
  Multics Emacs was the first port away from TECO, thoroughly described by its author Bernie Greenberg: http://www.multicians.org/mepap.html There’s a link to the source in that paper, dating to the early 1980s.
  Other flavours of Emacs were ZWEI (ZWEI was EINE Initiailly; EINE Is Not Emacs) for the MIT CADR Lisp Machine (http://www.heeltoe.com/retro/mit/mit_cadr_lmss.html) and its descendants like ZMACS on the LMI Lambda and on Symbolics Genera systems.
Boustrophedontic text by Kupfernigk · 2012-06-11 01:36 · Score: 1

It now handles bidirectional test, so its market has extended to the users of several dialects of early Classical Greek. This is a must have feature if ever there was one.
Yes, I know. Word processors which handle Hebrew and Arabic allow for changing direction, but this is associated with different languages.

--
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Wow! by Chemisor · 2012-06-11 01:41 · Score: 3, Funny

Wow! Emacs now has more features than BSD!
1. Re:Wow! by hcs_$reboot · 2012-06-11 01:49 · Score: 2
  
  M-x post
  
  --
  Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Catching up to ten-year-old XEmacs features by kriston · 2012-06-11 01:41 · Score: 3, Funny

Ahh, it's nice to see GNU Emacs finally bothering to catch up to these ten-year-old XEmacs features.

--
Kriston
1. Re:Catching up to ten-year-old XEmacs features by cc1984_ · 2012-06-11 02:30 · Score: 1
  
  Why is this modded funny? Is it because it's too true not to be?!
2. Re:Catching up to ten-year-old XEmacs features by klapaucjusz · 2012-06-11 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  it's nice to see GNU Emacs finally bothering to catch up to these ten-year-old XEmacs features.
  I've always wondered why FSF Emacs couldn't implement a package system...
3. Re:Catching up to ten-year-old XEmacs features by olau · 2012-06-11 03:24 · Score: 2
  
  I like the anthropomorphized phrasing - as if Emacs itself woke on one day and said, hey, I'm going to hack my Bazaar repository and implement those features that this other not-yet-self-aware fork has had for a decade.
  Note that for Emacs, a decade is just the blink of an eye.
4. Re:Catching up to ten-year-old XEmacs features by sl3xd · 2012-06-11 05:27 · Score: 1
  
  Note that for Emacs, a decade is just the blink of an eye.
  I've heard that Emacs Makes A Computer Slow... but I didn't know it was that slow.
  
  --
  -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
5. Re:Catching up to ten-year-old XEmacs features by cgt · 2012-06-11 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  It's GNU Emacs, not FSF Emacs
Pico by tepples · 2012-06-11 01:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

That or learn Pico. Just about every shell account I've used has had either Pico or GNU Nano installed.
1. Re:Pico by Creepy · 2012-06-11 08:50 · Score: 1
  
  heh - pico was always self explanatory and didn't really have anything to learn once you knew how to get to the menus. I used it a lot except for classes that forced me to use vi or emacs. At least learning vi had some use outside of vi (God how I love sed, and the search/replace syntax is basically the same). Emacs was awful on the machines I had to use - 2 minutes was a quick start for it in non-X mode, so I preferred vi. I liked XEmacs later on, but that took about 2 minutes to load on the hardware I had (I don't think any of the CPUs were even in the MHz range yet, so we're talking kHz - in fact, the first machine I had access to was a 6 1kHz processor 6502 that was often crashed with the while(1) fork(); command).
Emacs env and Emacs Muse by unixisc · 2012-06-11 02:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

Speaking of which, if one is working under Emacs, rather than ash/bash/csh/...zsh as the interface to the OS, can one use other editors, be it vim, pico, nano or whatever other editor there may be under unix (I'm using the term loosely to cover linux, bsds, minix, svr4, or any other variant)
Another question - looking @ the GNU software directory, there is also an Emacs muse, which is 'an authoring and publishing environment for Emacs. It simplifies the process of writing documents and publishing them to various output formats.'. Has anybody ever tried that before? How is it, and what is the status of its development? How does it compare to similar tools from, say, Adobe? This seems to be one application that would do well under a CLI, and not need DEs to work under, and it would be a good extension of Emacs' capabilities.
Emacs' next frontiers by unixisc · 2012-06-11 02:06 · Score: 1

Maybe Emacs next goal could be to provide a windowing system within its environment that would replace the likes of X11 7.7, or beat Wayland to the punch, all within Emacs itself. Then, whenever anybody creates any unix, such as a Minix, Tiny Core Linux, Hurd, OpenIndiana or whatever, all one would need to do is have Linux be the automatic application that starts up when one logs in. Oh, and add to it a set of shell commands as well, so that different shells, from ash-zsh just won't be needed. Everything should be hunky dory!
Re:Days after RMS got robbed?! by unixisc · 2012-06-11 02:10 · Score: 1

That's some conspiracy theory - to rob rms just to get the latest emacs outta the door. Maybe it was to prevent him from noticing that some parts of the bison grammer had not gone out w/ it? Maybe he's right - Big Brother is watching!
Re:So, Emacs has become a better OS... by unixisc · 2012-06-11 02:22 · Score: 2

Another suggestion - how about making all the GNU packages a part of Emacs? So that one can run, for example M-x-gnucash?
Re:Does it do windows? by tuffy · 2012-06-11 02:31 · Score: 1

There is an official Windows build which is usually found in the "windows" subdirectory on the official mirrors. There's also an unofficial Mac OS X build (though the site is currently down).

--
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-06-11 02:37 · Score: 2

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gosling was pushing NetBeans by wol · 2012-06-11 02:43 · Score: 1

I remember Gosling pushing to get people to move to NetBeans in 2008 (surprisingly a product created by his company, Sun). I tried it. Didn't like it. It felt like it wanted to be a gui rather than an editor. So I went back to happily using Emacs. So, serious question from an old guy and lisp programmer - what do you suggest as a replacement and why?

--
If you think deeply enough, you will have no single direction for your outrage.
1. Re:Gosling was pushing NetBeans by assertation · 2012-06-11 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  I get where you are coming from. I used EMACS in college for everything when I was learning to program. After school, I have used Visual Slickedit since it has the benefits of an IDE with the features of an advanced text editor.
  I've started learning Eclipse since I am a Java programmer and it seems to be a defacto standard in many Java shops.
  I've been very impressed so far. My only disappointment is the loss of a few text editing features, some of which have been replaced by this extension:
  http://tkilla.ch/column_mode/
  I don't know how well Eclipse would appeal to non-Java programmers or people who do many different things. It seems to work on a very different paradign from Emacs and text editor centric IDEs.
  Instead of "open any file and crunch text" it is organized around projects and one way of doing things. I know, that sounds bad, but with the features they have and the thought they put into it, it actually does relieve the Java programmer of a lot of pain.
2. Re:Gosling was pushing NetBeans by DrVxD · 2012-06-24 09:20 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know how well Eclipse would appeal to non-Java programmers or people who do many different things
  It doesn't.
  
  --
  Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Give the GUI a try by olau · 2012-06-11 03:15 · Score: 1

You'll want to remove the useless icon toolbar and perhaps customize the colors and size, but when you do that, it's just much, much better. For instance copy-pasting multiple lines with mouse from Emacs in a terminal window doesn't work properly.
I used to be like you when I started with Emacs back in the nineties, but things have changed.
1. Re:Give the GUI a try by DdJ · 2012-06-11 04:56 · Score: 1
  
  If the day comes that I want to use a mouse for copy/paste operations in Emacs, I may give it a try. Today, I tend not to touch the mouse when I'm in Emacs.
2. Re:Give the GUI a try by bLanark · 2012-06-11 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  Well, it's often been said that Emacs is a pretty good operating system, lacking only a decent editor...
  
  --
  Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
3. Re:Give the GUI a try by DdJ · 2012-06-11 10:49 · Score: 1
  
  It's not just assuming you run other programs than emacs, but further assuming you do not run those programs within emacs. Because, if you do, the normal emacs mechanisms work just fine (as they have since I developed the habit in the late 1980s).
Wait by INowRegretThesePosts · 2012-06-11 03:20 · Score: 2

I didn't understand you.
Can't you simply run Emacs in text-UI mode or, better yet, run it on the client using TRAMP
to access the files on the server?
Re:Web browser as OS by unixisc · 2012-06-11 03:28 · Score: 1

Except that it was discontinued in 1999 (as per wiki). Maybe a good idea would be to take GNOME Web a.k.a. Epiphany, and include that in Emacs? At this stage, things like Elinks are not adequate for most websites.
Muscle memory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 03:48 · Score: 1

The reason Emacs keeps going is it's always the same. Once you learn it, you have muscle memory and you no longer have to think about what you're doing. I've seen IDEs come and go over the past three decades. And just keep using Emacs. Works on all platforms, and it's always the same. I don't have to fight with my main tool, I just use it. Emacs will always continue as long as professionals need an editor to use all day, every day.
A lot of these platforms like Win8, Unity, Gnome 3, FireFox, etc need to learn that muscle memory is IMPORTANT. People who use computers professionally all the time do NOT WANT gratuitous change for no reason.
Which editor? by miltonw · 2012-06-11 06:33 · Score: 2

When I first started programming, I went to work at a software company that also provided consultants to their clients. At the software company, the editor-to-use was an editor created by one of their programmers. The editor was fantastic with many bells and whistles, customizable keys. Much easier to use than the common editor provided by the computer manufacturer.

So I mastered this fantastic editor.

Then I was sent out to my first assignment and this fantastic editor didn't exist there, I was in serious trouble. I had to quickly learn the common editor provided by the computer manufacturer.

I learned my lesson: First become a master of the common editor that is always installed so you can quickly handle all editing tasks, especially in an emergency -- then learn whichever editor you want.

I feel sorry for the emac-and-only-emacs gurus who, when confronted with a system lacking emacs have to flounder and misuse the always-available "vi" or "vim".

No matter how fantastic your editor-of-choice is, if you get on a system without that editor, what are you going to do?
1. Re:Which editor? by Brett+Diamond · 2012-06-11 08:33 · Score: 2
  
  If your new Unix does not have emacs but you want to use it, then Install it. Or use one of the many editors that use the same key-strokes (zile, mg, tm). Heck, even nano/pico use emacs key-strokes for most of their operation. Long and short, if you learn the fantastic editor, you can bring it with you or use one of the lesser-featured editors that probably are available that map to your skill-set. To take the argument that "don't use X because it isn't guaranteed to be everywhere you will be in the future" a bit farther, you shouldn't use Unix because your next assignment might have you using Windows -- Windows may not be as good, it is everywhere, so use that.
2. Re:Which editor? by miltonw · 2012-06-11 10:49 · Score: 1
  
  *sigh*
  
  When you are a contractor working at a client's site, not only do you not necessarily have the privileges to install whatever you want, you also may not have the outside connections to download stuff. It also bad form to install whatever you want on client's machines -- and bill them the hours required to do so.
  
  Personally, I consider it an extremely bad image to show up at a client site and then whine, "I can't work on your machine using standard tools because I don't know how to use them. I have to install more software before I can do the job you hired me to do."
  
  I can't believe that you actually object to knowing all the basic tools well. Have fun with that attitude.
3. Re:Which editor? by DMUTPeregrine · 2012-06-11 12:25 · Score: 1
  
  Don't use ONLY X, make sure you can use the baseline.
  This is why I can use ED and vi. I prefer EMACS, and use it when I can, but if I have to fall back to another I can.
  
  --
  Not a sentence!
4. Re:Which editor? by Brett+Diamond · 2012-06-12 00:42 · Score: 1
  
  Whoa! At no point did I say "don't learn vi" or even "don't enjoy vi", certainly not "whine if you are stuck with vi" or "gouge the customer because they only provided vi." Rather, that vi (like emacs) is old and that, with a very few exceptions, every Unix distribution ships with alternative editors. Moreover, that the chances are very high that one of those editors uses emacs control sequences, at least to navigate about the document. Thus, the skill set you acquire learning emacs will serve you well using other tools. Heck, bash uses emacs sequences to navigate, kill and yank, and even search your command history.
  Thus, when someone asks "I learned emacs and now I find myself on a computer that has no emacs," I respond, "install it or use an editor that is similar." This seems (to me, at least) more help than "you were foolish to learn an editor that is not installed on every unix; go learn vi."
  When I visit a customer, I bring a disc containing distributions of lots of tools, including editors. You do not need extra privileges to compile and run these tools (well most of them, anyway -- certainly not a text editor!) and it solves the issue of not knowing which flavor of Unix you will be facing. Additionally, it reflects that you, in fact, know what you are doing. At least in my experience.
  By all means embrace vi (or vim or viper or whatever). It has been used to build fantastic things. But you ought not object to others using some other editor. I suspect you'll have a difficult time having fun with that attitude.
5. Re:Which editor? by miltonw · 2012-06-12 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  Um, point to where I "objected to others using some other editor"?
  
  All I was saying was learn all the standard basic tools that exist on all *nix platforms and you'll always be able to get things done. Where did I say anything bad about also learning other tools? Geez, calm down.
Scroll bar by Brett+Diamond · 2012-06-11 08:18 · Score: 1

When is emacs going to get horizontal scroll bars? Now that M-g gives me goto-line (ok, M-g M-g - whatever), the lack of them there scroll bars is the only that keeps me using XEmacs.
Emacs Rocks! by gstamp · 2012-06-11 22:39 · Score: 1

If you want a good example of what makes emacs so powerful you might want to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Te_a-AGqM
emacs and the vhdl-mode by Bassman59 · 2012-06-12 11:01 · Score: 1

I do FPGA design for a living, and I will sing the praises of the vhdl mode, which is the single greatest piece of software for us hardware guys, ever.