3 ms·

Running emacs like "$ emacs <text-file>" is like booting a computer, editing a single text file, and then "$ shutdown -h now".

by gkya 11y ago

lispm 11y ago
Not really. GNU Emacs is no operating system. It has no network stack, no framebuffer interface, no file system implementation, etc. It provides interfaces to those. As such it does not initialize hardware and it starts no OS during startup. GNU Emacs starts a Lisp environment, loads a memory dump, runs various initialization code, etc.
- gkya 11y ago
  Oh, thankfully someone told me that emacs does not have framebuffers and filesystems. It doesn't have wireless drivers too! My grandparent comment was an analogy, for illustrating how it's not the optimal way to use emacs, as a command line program invoked to operate on one file and then closed and reopened.
  - lispm 11y ago
    The analogy wasn't that great. Booting a machine has nothing to do with typical uses of Emacs. There are many applications which are long running and are working on multiple documents - it's just another mode of working with an application. One can use GNU Emacs just fine as an editor which starts and quits on a single file. 'emacs -q' starts in a few milliseconds on my Mac. I use single file edits with Emacs on the terminal all the time. Though I usually also have a long running instance of Emacs - but then it is used as a Common Lisp IDE, not just as an editor. Then one can setup an Emacs editor server. Or start the Editor and leave it running. This is no different from, say, a CAD program or any typical application on the Mac, where usually a single instance of an application keeps running, editing multiple documents.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Fine, sure, but I think his point is just: Emacs users don't run Emacs on files; they run Emacs once and then open files with it (or with gnuclient/emacsclient).
wglb 11y ago
It isn't actually as bad as all that. I confess that I do this in system admin mode. On my big workstation it takes about five seconds for emacs -nw to start up. And lately, I have begun using 'mg' for such quick tasks Startup time is less than a second. It is probably on the order of VI for size and speed, and uses the emacs keybindings. It is an upgrade of the MicroEMACS editor. But normally I do open emacs on a per-project basis and keep it open, likely for days. Those do take a little while to start up. And with .emacs.desktop, it is easy to end up with an accumulation of a couple hundred files at startup time. (Compare the size of a single tab of Chrome to emacs, or even Microsoft Word. Both are swamped by the chrome size. And we think nothing of spinning up a new tab, no problem.)

Running emacs like "$ emacs <text-file>" is like booting a computer, editing a single text file, and then "$ shutdown -h now".

by gkya 11y ago

Running emacs like "$ emacs <text-file>" is like booting a computer, editing a single text file, and then "$ shutdown -h now".

lispm 11y ago

Not really. GNU Emacs is no operating system. It has no network stack, no framebuffer interface, no file system implementation, etc. It provides interfaces to those. As such it does not initialize hardware and it starts no OS during startup. GNU Emacs starts a Lisp environment, loads a memory dump, runs various initialization code, etc.

gkya 11y ago
Oh, thankfully someone told me that emacs does not have framebuffers and filesystems. It doesn't have wireless drivers too! My grandparent comment was an analogy, for illustrating how it's not the optimal way to use emacs, as a command line program invoked to operate on one file and then closed and reopened.
- lispm 11y ago
  The analogy wasn't that great. Booting a machine has nothing to do with typical uses of Emacs. There are many applications which are long running and are working on multiple documents - it's just another mode of working with an application. One can use GNU Emacs just fine as an editor which starts and quits on a single file. 'emacs -q' starts in a few milliseconds on my Mac. I use single file edits with Emacs on the terminal all the time. Though I usually also have a long running instance of Emacs - but then it is used as a Common Lisp IDE, not just as an editor. Then one can setup an Emacs editor server. Or start the Editor and leave it running. This is no different from, say, a CAD program or any typical application on the Mac, where usually a single instance of an application keeps running, editing multiple documents.
tptacek 11y ago
Fine, sure, but I think his point is just: Emacs users don't run Emacs on files; they run Emacs once and then open files with it (or with gnuclient/emacsclient).

wglb 11y ago

It isn't actually as bad as all that. I confess that I do this in system admin mode. On my big workstation it takes about five seconds for emacs -nw to start up. And lately, I have begun using 'mg' for such quick tasks Startup time is less than a second. It is probably on the order of VI for size and speed, and uses the emacs keybindings. It is an upgrade of the MicroEMACS editor. But normally I do open emacs on a per-project basis and keep it open, likely for days. Those do take a little while to start up. And with .emacs.desktop, it is easy to end up with an accumulation of a couple hundred files at startup time. (Compare the size of a single tab of Chrome to emacs, or even Microsoft Word. Both are swamped by the chrome size. And we think nothing of spinning up a new tab, no problem.)