4 ms·

Or mutt if that's where you are going. I can't tell you how many emails I've accidentally sent from the browser that end in :wq

bch 11y ago
Now I'm jokingly imagining running Emacs and "term" mode with mutt or elinks and running vi to do the editing. It sounds silly on the surface, but I think is a testament to the composability of the tools. Edit: tested Emacs/elinks, and it works if the TERM is changed from eterm-color to vt100. Hooray for text and Unix.
- jethro_tell 11y ago
  What is the emacs for? I'm so confused.
  - bch 11y ago
    I did say "jokingly imagining" above. "Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent text editor."[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    Although the OP posted himself, one thing I try to explain to people who don't use Emacs very much is that instead of thinking of it as an editor with a Lisp extension language, it's better to think of it as a Lisp environment with a built in editor. And although people jokingly refer to it as an OS (and even the kitchen sink is included -- as an icon), it's really more like a shell. You have a windowing environment, you can integrate other programs including terminal shells, debuggers, etc, etc. Finally, because it is a full Lisp environment, you have 30+ years of accumulated Lisp programs that you can run (some of which have no equal on any platform). I used Emacs for 20 years and while I've strayed away from it (got interested in Vim), I'm slowly making my way back. Not for the Emacs keybindings (which are fine), but for the entire elisp ecosystem. So in a way the OP's imaginings are not so far off (although I don't think you can actually run vim inside emacs -- you will need to use Evil mode instead ;-) ).
    - bch 11y ago
      I used nvi on NetBSD, and indeed it did work if I set TERM=vt100 inside Emacs term (M-x term). So: NetBSD$ env EDITOR=vi emacs (M-x term) Emacs$ env TERM=vt100 elinks news.ycombinator.com (go to text area, start editing, ^T, and up pops (n)vi) I'm a long-time Emacs user as well, but have found myself on vi for last few years, initially as a refresher. There's definitely still a place in my heart for Emacs, though. I think your characterization of Emacs is also fair; I usually describe it as a Lisp VM. Edit: formatting for clarity(?)
  - LukeShu 11y ago
    Emacs can serve as a terminal multiplexer, which is the most obvious thing for Emacs to provide in that setup, though as mikekchar said, it does have a lot to offer. I never quite got the people who run Emacs in screen/tmux; emacs can already do that!
    - fennecfoxen 11y ago
      Is there an emacs equivalent of screen -r? (or, if you want to be exciting, -x?)
      - tomjakubowski 11y ago
        Sort of. You can run emacs as a daemon and attach to it with emacsclient. Then when you want to detach, you just C-x C-c like usual, or disconnect and let the emacsclient process die. You have to remember to run emacs as a daemon up front, though. You could also run emacs inside something like dtach or abduco [1], which are a "session managers" like screen or tmux but without the multiplexer. http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco/ http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco/
        LukeShu 11y ago
        Yes, I was referring to `emacs --daemon`/`emacsclient`. If you run `emacsclient -a ''` then it will automatically run `emacs --daemon` for you (if it isn't already running), so that you don't need to run it up-front.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

bch 11y ago

Now I'm jokingly imagining running Emacs and "term" mode with mutt or elinks and running vi to do the editing. It sounds silly on the surface, but I think is a testament to the composability of the tools. Edit: tested Emacs/elinks, and it works if the TERM is changed from eterm-color to vt100. Hooray for text and Unix.

jethro_tell 11y ago
What is the emacs for? I'm so confused.
- bch 11y ago
  I did say "jokingly imagining" above. "Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent text editor."[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Although the OP posted himself, one thing I try to explain to people who don't use Emacs very much is that instead of thinking of it as an editor with a Lisp extension language, it's better to think of it as a Lisp environment with a built in editor. And although people jokingly refer to it as an OS (and even the kitchen sink is included -- as an icon), it's really more like a shell. You have a windowing environment, you can integrate other programs including terminal shells, debuggers, etc, etc. Finally, because it is a full Lisp environment, you have 30+ years of accumulated Lisp programs that you can run (some of which have no equal on any platform). I used Emacs for 20 years and while I've strayed away from it (got interested in Vim), I'm slowly making my way back. Not for the Emacs keybindings (which are fine), but for the entire elisp ecosystem. So in a way the OP's imaginings are not so far off (although I don't think you can actually run vim inside emacs -- you will need to use Evil mode instead ;-) ).
  - bch 11y ago
    I used nvi on NetBSD, and indeed it did work if I set TERM=vt100 inside Emacs term (M-x term). So: NetBSD$ env EDITOR=vi emacs (M-x term) Emacs$ env TERM=vt100 elinks news.ycombinator.com (go to text area, start editing, ^T, and up pops (n)vi) I'm a long-time Emacs user as well, but have found myself on vi for last few years, initially as a refresher. There's definitely still a place in my heart for Emacs, though. I think your characterization of Emacs is also fair; I usually describe it as a Lisp VM. Edit: formatting for clarity(?)
- LukeShu 11y ago
  Emacs can serve as a terminal multiplexer, which is the most obvious thing for Emacs to provide in that setup, though as mikekchar said, it does have a lot to offer. I never quite got the people who run Emacs in screen/tmux; emacs can already do that!
  - fennecfoxen 11y ago
    Is there an emacs equivalent of screen -r? (or, if you want to be exciting, -x?)
    - tomjakubowski 11y ago
      Sort of. You can run emacs as a daemon and attach to it with emacsclient. Then when you want to detach, you just C-x C-c like usual, or disconnect and let the emacsclient process die. You have to remember to run emacs as a daemon up front, though. You could also run emacs inside something like dtach or abduco [1], which are a "session managers" like screen or tmux but without the multiplexer. http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco/ http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco/
      - LukeShu 11y ago
        Yes, I was referring to `emacs --daemon`/`emacsclient`. If you run `emacsclient -a ''` then it will automatically run `emacs --daemon` for you (if it isn't already running), so that you don't need to run it up-front.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]