39 ms·

I've switched to Emacs after 14 years of Vim (with the required evangelism^^). Initially it was because of Clojure, but then I tried org-mode. Now my GTD Setup

by preek 11y ago

I've switched to Emacs after 14 years of Vim (with the required evangelism^^). Initially it was because of Clojure, but then I tried org-mode. Now my GTD Setup (formerly Things.app), Notes for everything (formerly Evernote), Time Tracking (formerly Minco), Pomodoro Technique as well as writing slide decks (I'm a part time lecturer, so I do that a lot) are _all_ within org-mode. And not, because it's hipster, but because it's just so much better - plus it's completely platform agnostic and future proof, because it's just text. Cannot recommend it more. I started using simple outlines for meeting minutes and quickly realised that it will be easy and more efficient to migrate the aforementioned workflows into org-mode, too. A last one: Finally I can properly link between Mails, todos and notes (using mu4e for mails). That was never completely working on OS X with Evernote, Mail.app and Things and is just so important!

Uberphallus 11y ago
For anyone trying not to make the same terrible mistake, you have vim-orgmode: https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode
- midgetjones 11y ago
  Or for anyone that is more open-minded, yet worried about the learning curve of switching from vim to emacs: http://spacemacs.org/ http://spacemacs.org/
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Also worth checking out for anyone who (like me) thinks vim has much better keybinding philosophy than Emacs, and that switching evil-mode makes Emacs a perfect working environment.
    - sillysaurus3 11y ago
      Any vim user, try this: 1. brew install emacs, apt-get install emacs, or pkg add emacs 2. vim ~/.emacs 3. paste the following, verbatim. Don't bother reading it: (require 'package) ;; You might already have this line (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")) (when (< emacs-major-version 24) ;; For important compatibility libraries like cl-lib (add-to-list 'package-archives '("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/"))) (package-initialize) ;; You might already have this line 4. :wq 5. Open emacs 6. Press escape, then "x", then enter. Now type package-install and press enter. 7. Type evil-mode and press enter. 8. Click the "Buffers" menu at the top of the screen, then click "scratch" Now pretend like you're using Vim. It's almost identical. It's literally like using Vim. You can shift-V = to indent code, gg shift-V gG to select the whole buffer (or, y'know, command-A), etc. There were only two minor differences that annoyed me: ctrl-u no longer scrolls up, and yanking text copies to the global system clipboard. (v"+y is supposed to do that, not yanking!) To fix the scrolling issue, press escape then x and type "customize". In the search field, type "evil". You'll get a list of fancy customizations. One of them is C-u for scrolling; enable it, then click "apply and save" at the top. That should get you started. There are a bunch of fun things to do... Try escape, x, list-packages. You don't even need to know a single keybinding. You'll just get a list of packages with hyperlinks you can click on, which pops up a little info blob that usually has a link to a github repo for the package. If you try to stick with emacs, the next week or so will be "interesting." You an use escape x apropos to find info about escape x commands. (These are called "M-x" in emacs parlance. And if you use the GUI version of emacs, you can use alt-x instead of pressing escape then x. It's much easier, but doesn't seem to work in the terminal.) Personally, I stuck with it in order to learn how emacs worked: how you can design a program to be so extensible, and how extensible it truly was. Gamedevs in particular might be interested in going through this gauntlet; the way that emacs lisp exposes functionality will inform the design of the next engine you write. Check out Yegge's post about the universal design pattern as applied to gamedev.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > Check out Yegge's post about the universal design pattern as applied to gamedev. You mean this one? http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.htm http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pat...
        sillysaurus3 11y ago
        Yeah! It looks like your URL 404's though. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pat... All of it is pretty interesting, but it's sort of unreasonable to say "Here, read this tome." You can skip to the Wyvern section for the important bit. Gamedevs will be particularly interested, because the question of "How do I enable people to write games in the most flexible way?" is one of the great unsolved problems in gamedev. There's just no good way to do it. Every engine has tradeoffs, but circa 2016 these tradeoffs are anachronistic. A modern engine should be written mostly in the scripting language that it provides. Most of the codebase that would otherwise be C++ code should be script. This can be done with almost no performance penalty. So the only question left, once you decide to really do this, is how do you design it? I think Emacs' design is the answer. Almost all of the core ideas can be incorporated into a modern game engine, provided that it's built from scratch. Few people have the skills or the inclination to pull this off, which is why it hasn't happened yet. But I suspect anyone who does this will end up with thousands of users who love making things in it. As with Emacs.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > Yeah! It looks like your URL 404's though. Ok. Yeah, I accidentally deleted an #\l from "html" :(.
        grblovrflowerrr 11y ago
        I'm interested in this idea. What aspect of emacs design makes it unique? What are the "core ideas" you mention?
  - sdnguyen90 11y ago
    I switched to Spacemacs from Vim a few months ago and I'm probably never going back to Vim. I didn't notice any difference between Evil mode and actual Vim. Took me a week or two to learn the Emacs and Spacemacs specific things before I was comfortable using as my primary editor.
    - groovy2shoes 11y ago
      The fact that I cannot use `space` as a direction/movement key in spacemacs is a non-starter for me. I'd have more luck just learning Emacs's keybindings at that point.
      - pyre 11y ago
        Really? As a long-time Vim user that switched to Spacemacs but ended up back on Vim, I've never used the space bar for movement. I'm curious do you also use backspace for movement?
        groovy2shoes 11y ago
        No, not usually, but I use space a lot, which I didn't even realize until suddenly it pulled up a menu every time I pressed it.
      - fernandotakai 11y ago
        at least for me, it feels like i have to change my whole workflow to match spacemacs, instead of being the other way around (i, being able to easily config spacemacs to match my current vim workflow). it honestly felt really backwards to use spacemacs after ~10y of vim usage. i would prefer to learn plain emacs + evil mode instead.
        JamilD 11y ago
        I use emacs+evil; tried out spacemacs but found it over-customized. I want to know what everything in my .emacs does, and if I don't like something, how to change it. Spacemacs was way too overwhelming for me.
  - green7ea 11y ago
    I started using spacemacs (without evil) a few months ago and before that I was using a customized emacs. Spacemacs improves the user experience with their package management approach (it kicks much ass). Not only that but the c-c++-mode is almost as good as what I had configured and it took 5 minutes to configure instead many days. The version of which-key, magit and org-mode provided by spacemacs is better than what I used to have and greatly improved my emacs experience. I can't recommend it enough. My spacemacs file on github for anymone who is interested https://github.com/green7ea/SpacemacsConfig/blob/master/spacemacs https://github.com/green7ea/SpacemacsConfig/blob/master/spac...
    - look_lookatme 11y ago
      Spacemacs is awesome, I ended up doing the same thing you did -- chucking years of accumulated config in .emacs out the window. I think the one thing that Spacemacs could really benefit is a good guide to using it/emacs, similar to the Atom Flight Manual http://flight-manual.atom.io/ http://flight-manual.atom.io/
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- abstractwhiz 11y ago
  A much better move is to switch to emacs and use something like evil-mode to keep your vim-fu useful. After all, you can emulate vim in emacs, but the converse is not true. :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVQwYUxYEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVQwYUxYEg
mrbill 11y ago
The only thing that keeps me from being able to move away from Evernote is the oh-so-convenient Web Clipper that lets me save web pages/order receipts/etc (anything in the browser) with a right-click, and not having to "print to pdf" or anything like that. I would love suggestions for alternatives. I've been keeping a plaintext "notes" file as well for damn year 20 years, but am thinking about reorganizing it into OrgMode.
- alphapapa 11y ago
  I think I have what you're looking for. :) https://github.com/alphapapa/org-protocol-capture-html https://github.com/alphapapa/org-protocol-capture-html With this, you can capture HTML content directly into Org, converted into Org syntax with Pandoc. For example, to capture your comment into Org, I just highlight it in Pentadactyl (Firefox), press "cc", and Emacs pops up a capture buffer with your comment inserted into the capture template. Or if I press "ch", it passes it through Pandoc, converting HTML lists, tables, headings, code blocks, etc. into their Org counterparts. I also just added support for python-readability, so if I press "cr", the URL of the page is sent to python-readability, which gets the article content (just like the good ol' Readability bookmarklet), then passes it through Pandoc, and then places it into the capture template.

by preek 11y ago

Uberphallus 11y ago

For anyone trying not to make the same terrible mistake, you have vim-orgmode: https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode

midgetjones 11y ago
Or for anyone that is more open-minded, yet worried about the learning curve of switching from vim to emacs: http://spacemacs.org/ http://spacemacs.org/
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Also worth checking out for anyone who (like me) thinks vim has much better keybinding philosophy than Emacs, and that switching evil-mode makes Emacs a perfect working environment.
  - sillysaurus3 11y ago
    Any vim user, try this: 1. brew install emacs, apt-get install emacs, or pkg add emacs 2. vim ~/.emacs 3. paste the following, verbatim. Don't bother reading it: (require 'package) ;; You might already have this line (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")) (when (< emacs-major-version 24) ;; For important compatibility libraries like cl-lib (add-to-list 'package-archives '("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/"))) (package-initialize) ;; You might already have this line 4. :wq 5. Open emacs 6. Press escape, then "x", then enter. Now type package-install and press enter. 7. Type evil-mode and press enter. 8. Click the "Buffers" menu at the top of the screen, then click "scratch" Now pretend like you're using Vim. It's almost identical. It's literally like using Vim. You can shift-V = to indent code, gg shift-V gG to select the whole buffer (or, y'know, command-A), etc. There were only two minor differences that annoyed me: ctrl-u no longer scrolls up, and yanking text copies to the global system clipboard. (v"+y is supposed to do that, not yanking!) To fix the scrolling issue, press escape then x and type "customize". In the search field, type "evil". You'll get a list of fancy customizations. One of them is C-u for scrolling; enable it, then click "apply and save" at the top. That should get you started. There are a bunch of fun things to do... Try escape, x, list-packages. You don't even need to know a single keybinding. You'll just get a list of packages with hyperlinks you can click on, which pops up a little info blob that usually has a link to a github repo for the package. If you try to stick with emacs, the next week or so will be "interesting." You an use escape x apropos to find info about escape x commands. (These are called "M-x" in emacs parlance. And if you use the GUI version of emacs, you can use alt-x instead of pressing escape then x. It's much easier, but doesn't seem to work in the terminal.) Personally, I stuck with it in order to learn how emacs worked: how you can design a program to be so extensible, and how extensible it truly was. Gamedevs in particular might be interested in going through this gauntlet; the way that emacs lisp exposes functionality will inform the design of the next engine you write. Check out Yegge's post about the universal design pattern as applied to gamedev.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      > Check out Yegge's post about the universal design pattern as applied to gamedev. You mean this one? http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.htm http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pat...
      - sillysaurus3 11y ago
        Yeah! It looks like your URL 404's though. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pat... All of it is pretty interesting, but it's sort of unreasonable to say "Here, read this tome." You can skip to the Wyvern section for the important bit. Gamedevs will be particularly interested, because the question of "How do I enable people to write games in the most flexible way?" is one of the great unsolved problems in gamedev. There's just no good way to do it. Every engine has tradeoffs, but circa 2016 these tradeoffs are anachronistic. A modern engine should be written mostly in the scripting language that it provides. Most of the codebase that would otherwise be C++ code should be script. This can be done with almost no performance penalty. So the only question left, once you decide to really do this, is how do you design it? I think Emacs' design is the answer. Almost all of the core ideas can be incorporated into a modern game engine, provided that it's built from scratch. Few people have the skills or the inclination to pull this off, which is why it hasn't happened yet. But I suspect anyone who does this will end up with thousands of users who love making things in it. As with Emacs.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > Yeah! It looks like your URL 404's though. Ok. Yeah, I accidentally deleted an #\l from "html" :(.
        grblovrflowerrr 11y ago
        I'm interested in this idea. What aspect of emacs design makes it unique? What are the "core ideas" you mention?
- sdnguyen90 11y ago
  I switched to Spacemacs from Vim a few months ago and I'm probably never going back to Vim. I didn't notice any difference between Evil mode and actual Vim. Took me a week or two to learn the Emacs and Spacemacs specific things before I was comfortable using as my primary editor.
  - groovy2shoes 11y ago
    The fact that I cannot use `space` as a direction/movement key in spacemacs is a non-starter for me. I'd have more luck just learning Emacs's keybindings at that point.
    - pyre 11y ago
      Really? As a long-time Vim user that switched to Spacemacs but ended up back on Vim, I've never used the space bar for movement. I'm curious do you also use backspace for movement?
      - groovy2shoes 11y ago
        No, not usually, but I use space a lot, which I didn't even realize until suddenly it pulled up a menu every time I pressed it.
    - fernandotakai 11y ago
      at least for me, it feels like i have to change my whole workflow to match spacemacs, instead of being the other way around (i, being able to easily config spacemacs to match my current vim workflow). it honestly felt really backwards to use spacemacs after ~10y of vim usage. i would prefer to learn plain emacs + evil mode instead.
      - JamilD 11y ago
        I use emacs+evil; tried out spacemacs but found it over-customized. I want to know what everything in my .emacs does, and if I don't like something, how to change it. Spacemacs was way too overwhelming for me.
- green7ea 11y ago
  I started using spacemacs (without evil) a few months ago and before that I was using a customized emacs. Spacemacs improves the user experience with their package management approach (it kicks much ass). Not only that but the c-c++-mode is almost as good as what I had configured and it took 5 minutes to configure instead many days. The version of which-key, magit and org-mode provided by spacemacs is better than what I used to have and greatly improved my emacs experience. I can't recommend it enough. My spacemacs file on github for anymone who is interested https://github.com/green7ea/SpacemacsConfig/blob/master/spacemacs https://github.com/green7ea/SpacemacsConfig/blob/master/spac...
  - look_lookatme 11y ago
    Spacemacs is awesome, I ended up doing the same thing you did -- chucking years of accumulated config in .emacs out the window. I think the one thing that Spacemacs could really benefit is a good guide to using it/emacs, similar to the Atom Flight Manual http://flight-manual.atom.io/ http://flight-manual.atom.io/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
abstractwhiz 11y ago
A much better move is to switch to emacs and use something like evil-mode to keep your vim-fu useful. After all, you can emulate vim in emacs, but the converse is not true. :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVQwYUxYEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVQwYUxYEg

mrbill 11y ago

The only thing that keeps me from being able to move away from Evernote is the oh-so-convenient Web Clipper that lets me save web pages/order receipts/etc (anything in the browser) with a right-click, and not having to "print to pdf" or anything like that. I would love suggestions for alternatives. I've been keeping a plaintext "notes" file as well for damn year 20 years, but am thinking about reorganizing it into OrgMode.

alphapapa 11y ago
I think I have what you're looking for. :) https://github.com/alphapapa/org-protocol-capture-html https://github.com/alphapapa/org-protocol-capture-html With this, you can capture HTML content directly into Org, converted into Org syntax with Pandoc. For example, to capture your comment into Org, I just highlight it in Pentadactyl (Firefox), press "cc", and Emacs pops up a capture buffer with your comment inserted into the capture template. Or if I press "ch", it passes it through Pandoc, converting HTML lists, tables, headings, code blocks, etc. into their Org counterparts. I also just added support for python-readability, so if I press "cr", the URL of the page is sent to python-readability, which gets the article content (just like the good ol' Readability bookmarklet), then passes it through Pandoc, and then places it into the capture template.