No.157
>>156I've been using Emacs for about two years now, it has definitely been worth the effort. Part of the joys of using Emacs is there's always new ways to improve and optimize your workflow. Currently in Emacs I'd say I am really happy with my Org-mode setup, C/C++, LaTeX, and am currently working on improving getting a Python setup I am happy with, it's almost there but not quite. I also use it as my terminal emulator.
I still consider myself a beginner, but with that experience I'd say the best thing to do is start using it. Recognize that unlike other editors, you bend it to your will and not the other way around. If there is something you don't like change it, if you want different keybindings change them, and if you find a better way of doing something then hack it together into a function you can use whenever. Also if you are looking for help be sure to check Emacs's internal help functions and check out the manuals (C-h i)
No.158
I've been using it for a while now. I originally started to try out the interactive Scheme mode (geiser), but what really made me stick to it was org-mode. It's absolutely worth it, emacs is probably the comfiest piece of software I've ever used.
I'm very far from mastering it, but the basics are not hard, just a bit unusual. Once you learn how to use the excellent help system, you can easily improve your workflow. Also which-key is a great package to help with learning keybindings:
https://melpa.org/#/which-key No.159
I don't think there's too much of a learning curve. My dad taught me how to use it several years ago (maybe early 2010?) and it just stuck. Learning emacs was definitely worth it. Once you get reasonably proficient, which really doesn't take that long, navigation flows and you don't have to think about it. Also the extensibility is god-tier.
I actually don't think that there's much to learn before jumping in, you learn a lot from the tutorial and just hacking around with it.
No.160
Might as well make this an Emacs general.
Favorite lesser known packages?
Good themes?
Clever Hacks?
No.163
I use spacemacs (
http://spacemacs.org/) because it has the following advantages
- more ergonomic vim shortcuts
- nicer autocomplete
- adding support for coding, building and debugging in your language of joice is easy (if it is non exotic).
No.164
>>156i used vi(m) for about 15 years and ended up switching to emacs when i did more lisp than normal. org-mode is what made me stay.
i don't have a lot of customizations. usual packages for whatever language i'm working with, symon-mode, nyan-mode (because cute), some custom faces, org-mode (with org-crypt), and sometimes emms or eww.
it took me about two weeks to get used to the keybindings and become proficient with general text editing. i mostly use it now because i'm used to it and i keep a lot of my thoughts in org-mode. i don't use near as many features as i feel like i should.
No.165
I've used Emacs on and off for years.
First I used vim, but without touch tying it was not really much different from other editors, only that I could use it from the command line.
Then I used Emacs and from it's tutorial I realized I had to learn to type properly.
Then I went back to Vim because the keybindings are absolutely god tier (as long as you use qwerty that is).
Now I'm starting to use org-mode, but I am very annoyed by the emacs keybindings, and due to the nature of org files I don't think such a thing as evil-mode would be much of an improvement. I'm looking into modalka mode which kind of does what I want in layering a custom modal edition on top of a buffer.
My problem with modalka mode is that it binds new keys to existing keys, like so:
(modalka-define-kbd "W" "M-w")
instead of binding directly to commands.
So I guess I'm going to try and understand Emacs better so I can make my own minor mode (or just modify modalka) to do it The Right Way (binding keys to commands, not other keys).
No.169
>>165check out spacemacs for real, you get vim shortcuts in with emacs flexiblity
as long as you don't need to run in a terminal it is great.
No.172
>>169I've been long interested in spacemacs.
So I guess I'll give it a try.
I just realized I just need to clone it and use it with my existing Emacs installation. For some reason I used to think I'd have to install a binary or build the whole thing.
No.175
I use spacemacs as well, after using nano for a loong time, and briefly having used vim. I really like it so far, but there's a lot left to learn.
Only problen I have atm is that I find it a pain to rice, I just want a nice colorscheme and I really can't find one.
No.177
>>175Look around here, maybe you'll find something you like:
https://emacsthemes.com/charts/all-time.html No.198
>>165w >>172 here.I am starting to use an alternative keyboard layout, so vi-style keys are now out of the question.
Though I dislike the convoluted Emacs bindings and it's hijacking of the workflow, I guess it is my best option now, since vi is so qwerty-heavy.
No.199
i started using it 3 days ago, have been messing around with options and soykaf to make it work on my Win8 craputer.
What I wanted was mainly the remote-file-editing via TRAMP, but I like the way it works overall.
Also being able to read a pdf file in a buffer while editing in aother is really neat. The only thing that I kind of would like to have now is a media player but i dont think it's really possible haha.
>>175i personally really like monokai
No.200
>>199I think the name is emms, it uses an external player such as mplayer.
No.202
>learning curveNot difficult, really. It's software, and despite gnu info not being very good, you can find single-page documentation on it:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.htmlI don't like emacs, but I was able to learn it and I'm sure anyone willing to could! You can do it, OP!
No.204
>>202These can be read from inside emacs with the info command, M-x info or C-h i
No.206
>>199If you like reading PDF files in emacs, you should check out pdf-tools, I think it's much better than the built-in docview:
https://melpa.org/#/pdf-tools No.218
I tried Spacemacs and it kind of sucks.
It loads a soykafload of files, it's slow, and ultimately it doesn't fix the fact that the interaction of Emacs and evil-mode is kind of awkward because you have both Emacs and Vim keybindings and you don't really know what to use.
Also Spacemacs crashed on me yesterday god knows why, and it never recovered, I'd just have a zombie window with no content until I shut down my laptop.
No.227
>>226Can't someone understand it and dislike it at the same time?
No.229
>>227what's wrong with unix philosophy?
No.231
>>226Unix hard-ons would use vi over Vim annytime.
No.232
>>226It's as unix as the Linux kernel, in the sense it's not following the unix philosophy. Some things are better off monolithic, look at how trash microkernels are. The unix philosophy is a great design philosophy but it is not right for everything. You can still appreciate the unix philosophy and use Emacs. Best to appreciate a philosophy rather than treat them as a religion
No.233
>>2321. I never read anything about monolithic kernel being considered more unix-like than microkernels but ok sure
2. Unix philosophy just makes sense. on the other hand, I don't see what sense there is in having a text editor program that does everything and anything, related to editing or not. You like emacs functionality? go use microemacs or something. The purported extendibility of emacs sounds neat until you realize that you have a operating system and you can just download regular goddam programs directly.
No.236
>>229It lacks coherence. You have a million small programs, all implementing their own way of handling command line parameters, their own input, output and configuration formats, etc. It's a horrible mess.
>>233emacs is not just a text editor, it's an interactive elisp environment. It runs elisp programs. Of course you could just download separate programs to do almost everything emacs does, but that would lack the tight integration and extreme customization that emacs provides. Many emacs users would run it as an actual operating system if they could because they find it superior to the "Unix way."
No.237
>>236>all implementing their own way of handling command line parameters, their own input, output and configuration formatsI don't remember reading anything about that. I do remember this
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2877684 though. What kind of broken Unix are you using?
No.239
>>237>What kind of broken Unix are you using?Probably one written by a lisper.
hint No.242
>>237You've never seen a program use
-flag
instead of
--flag
? Some programs allow you to combine
-a -b -c
into
-abc
, others don't. Which ones of these have you seen to describe the same thing:
--key value
,
--key=value
,
--key:value
, maybe even
--dKEY=value
?
It's nice to use a portable interface but treating it simply as a stream of characters makes parsing the output of every single command completely different and is likely to break with major version changes, which quickly leads to a mess when you need to support multiple versions.
No wonder the Unix philosophy is pretty much dead. It simply can't work at the scale modern applications demand.
>>239GNU is not Unix.
No.243
>>242>GNU is not Unix.yet it certainly reimplements is
badly No.245
>>242Once again, I don't know what broken Unix you use. Flags longer than one letter are always two dashes. All single letter flags are combinable as long as they're not in the wrong part of the expression. I have only ever seen
--key value
and
--key=value
, and I understand that the ambiguity isn't nice, but so fuckin' what? Besides, what in hell does any of that have to do with Unix philosophy?
Please refer to the holy books.
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/unix-nature.html No.250
To be fair I found emacs pretty natural and easy to use
No.253
>>198>>165There's nothing ergonomic about where the vim keys are placed on qwerty beyond hjkl. They're almost all mnemonic or inherited from ed/sed/regular expression. ^ and $ are particularly heinous for how useful they are. I use it on Dvorak just fine.
The comfort comes from modal editing and composable commands.
No.254
>>253mmm, composable commands. when I first used vim I was coming out of a carpal-inducing jungle of Control Shift Alt. It was an almost electrifying experience.
No.255
>>242First off, –long-options are a GNU thing and therefore NOT UNIX. I'd be suspicious of anything GNU does, more so as a representative of Unix.
There is a C library for parsing command line flags, I am sure every application that uses them does it through said library. So they're bound to be pretty consistent. Else it's the program's fault for implementing it's own wheel.
Sure, there are some utilities that let you omit the dash, like 'ps aux' or 'tar xvf', but that doesn't hurt anybody. Sometimes you need to separate the flags because they take arguments, like 'mount -o loop'. It is standard, there isn't '-o=loop'.
And generally you're talking as if Emacs and lisp didn't have their own inconsistencies all over. Sometimes lisp functions take a symbol, sometimes they take a colon-symbol, either 'option or :option.
In the end, both these environments evolve and inconsistencies are introduced. They're not unlike natural languages in this sense.
No.256
>>255Oh and in line with the idea of them being like natural languages, they have idioms which you learn to use, for example 'ps aux' is pretty much muscle memory already for me. Every language and environment you'll ever use means you'll have to adapt to it and gradually gain fluency.
Lispers don't like Unix because it doesn't adjust to
their ideals, Unix guys don't like Emacs because it doesn't adjust to
theirs, who's in the wrong here? Of course if you're biased towards either you'll say "the others, the guys in the other band are wrong!".
These stupid religious wars where people actually seem to think that their environment is inherently and objectively superior are a good indicator that people need to get their heads out of their ass.
No.257
>>256it's possible to argue for one philosophy or another. The problem is that people don't know how to argue about that sort of thing, and they assume their point is self-evident.
No.261
>>242You ever used
dd
? That's another great example, and it's even immortalized in POSIX!
No.293
Trying out emacs for the first time today, from using vim in the past. I'm ofc using evil mode. I dont know how I feel about the lisp configuration, it may take some getting used to.
Are there any reccommended packages, right now I just have some basic completion.
No.297
>>293My sweet spot for general Emacs use is
company-mode
flycheck
smartparens (for non-lisps) and paredit ( lisps)
linum-relative
helm (although I am considering switching to swiper/ivy)
No.442
Any advice on making Emacs more secure given it connects to the Internet, handles GPG keys, and runs foreign programs downloaded from Github?
No.482
>>156I'm using it for almost 2 years now. I must say that at the beginning the learning curve was absolutely awful. At the same time I think it's worth it. I work a lot on remote machines and the ability to work in an editor as if I'm working locally is really nice. Also, once you get the muscle memory (takes a while though) you will be much faster than in other editors. The package manager is also really easy to use so I can have modes for anything I need, which include ways to run interpreters for the relevant language in Emacs itself. I think learning it is definitely worth it.
No.581
>>156Been using emacs for a while whith Proof General and Company Coq as an IDE. That makes a really good way to write and check Coq proofs and it works in console mode too, meaning that proving over ssh connection is possible. What about learning curve? Well, if I need something from the editor, I just google step-by-step solutions not bothering to actually learn how it works. I would never imagine using emacs for anything other than that, though, and I probably wouldn't have started using it for Coq if there was an (at least) equivalent standalone option.
No.611
Took about a week, a month if you count muscle memory.
Yeah, worth it. It's a good editor for Clojure, Shell and Python, via packages such as Cider and Company-mode.
No.1043
How do you get really good with emacs? I feel like I really underutilize it, but there are so many things I just don't know where to start.
No.1052
>>1043Learn the hotkeys, learn some basic emacs lisp, install some packages, maybe even making your own…
No.1381
>>1052What are some good resources to learn how to make your own packages? Are the elisp intro and the manual sufficient?
