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Epsilon is great. Let me offer a whole-hearted recommendation. It's a secret weapon, an unfair advantage we have, those of us in the know. I was so happy to

Epsilon is great. Let me offer a whole-hearted recommendation. It's a secret weapon, an unfair advantage we have, those of us in the know. I was so happy to come upon it as a sadly ex-Symbolics-ZMacs user (and ex-MIT-TECO-Emacs user) when first confronted with a 286 system, and I have have been using it ever since. I buy a few copies every few years, typically for team members who wonder what's that magic I keep using. At my present company, I fought (and won) a three-month battle with the Software Standards Committee to be allowed to install it. As a Windows developer I routinely do all editing in Epsilon, switching to Visual Studio only to compile and debug. To draft this very message, I switched away from my web browser to Epsilon. Steven Doerfler provides great customer service on the very rare occasion that I need to turn to him. If you have any emacs in your soul, buy Epsilon. Now.

PeCaN 10y ago
Why do you prefer it over regular Emacs? How is it better enough to make up for the much larger collection of extensions for Emacs? The demo for me just felt like a snappier Emacs clone.
- rbryan13 10y ago
  Well, the first N specific things that come to mind have already been expressed pretty well by previous comments here (including your own "snappier"). The next 10*N things are already expressed pretty well in the 2009-format-but-still-valid-content marketroid material on lugaru.com. As it happens, I haven't found a need to explore a universe of community extensions because right out of the "box" Epsilon does nearly everything I need, and my few personal extensions take care of the rest. Beyond that, I no longer care to engage in yet another emacs religious war, and emacs does not need any bad-mouthing from me.
  - Elrac 10y ago
    I can understand and respect that you're reluctant to write an endorsement of Epsilon and/or a comparison with Emacs. But I'd like to let you know that while starting to read your comment I was looking forward to just that, and now find myself a bit disappointed that you're not sharing some reasons for your enthusiasm. I was a big fan of Epsilon back in the days when it was an alternative to WordStar and I think I still own an original (paid) copy on floppy disks, but I'm not familiar enough (any more) with its feature set to meaningfully answer the question of what qualifies it above Emacs. Personally, I'm considering paying $250 just for the nostalgia value. And I love fast editors with an uncluttered surface. The ability to edit arbitrarily long lines and binaries is certainly a plus. But I would appreciate, if you'd reconsider, hearing more arguments to knock me off the fence.

PeCaN 10y ago

Why do you prefer it over regular Emacs? How is it better enough to make up for the much larger collection of extensions for Emacs? The demo for me just felt like a snappier Emacs clone.

rbryan13 10y ago
Well, the first N specific things that come to mind have already been expressed pretty well by previous comments here (including your own "snappier"). The next 10*N things are already expressed pretty well in the 2009-format-but-still-valid-content marketroid material on lugaru.com. As it happens, I haven't found a need to explore a universe of community extensions because right out of the "box" Epsilon does nearly everything I need, and my few personal extensions take care of the rest. Beyond that, I no longer care to engage in yet another emacs religious war, and emacs does not need any bad-mouthing from me.
- Elrac 10y ago
  I can understand and respect that you're reluctant to write an endorsement of Epsilon and/or a comparison with Emacs. But I'd like to let you know that while starting to read your comment I was looking forward to just that, and now find myself a bit disappointed that you're not sharing some reasons for your enthusiasm. I was a big fan of Epsilon back in the days when it was an alternative to WordStar and I think I still own an original (paid) copy on floppy disks, but I'm not familiar enough (any more) with its feature set to meaningfully answer the question of what qualifies it above Emacs. Personally, I'm considering paying $250 just for the nostalgia value. And I love fast editors with an uncluttered surface. The ability to edit arbitrarily long lines and binaries is certainly a plus. But I would appreciate, if you'd reconsider, hearing more arguments to knock me off the fence.