4 ms·

I don't think Emacs has been modeless in many, many years. I read that already in 1978 Emacs buffers could be used to edit files, of course, but also read email

I don't think Emacs has been modeless in many, many years. I read that already in 1978 Emacs buffers could be used to edit files, of course, but also read email, run a shell, show a list of compilation errors linked to source locations, etc. Each of those is a completely different mode of operation with different keybindings (and different meaning for keybindings that happened to be shared).

ajsalminen 9y ago
That's true but the text editing part is modeless as opposed to how vi and it's kin do it. Of course even that can be changed and Spacemacs has recently made it a fairly popular choice.
gumby 9y ago
"Modeless" is used as a term of art here: when entering text there is no difference between entering and editing (as opposed to, say, vi which separates editing and navigation from entry). Word and TextEdit are modeless editors. What Emacs calls "modes" have indeed been around for a long time; I started using Emacs in 1978 as it happens and did use it to read my mail. However ITS didn't have the concept of "shell" (the command entry system was also the debugger!) nor of "inferior" processes so you would exit EMACS to compile or run other programs.
- omaranto 9y ago
  Are you saying the term modeless only applies to text editing? I thought it was a general UI term that can be applied to any program and means that keystrokes always mean the same thing independent of context. In that case, Emacs as a whole is not modeless, but usually each individual buffer is. And sorry for getting the history wrong. I think I mixed the ITS and Multics versions up. Maybe the email reader was only in the ITS version and the Multics version had the ability to call the PL/I or Fortran compiler within Emacs and get a buffer with an error list. Does that sound right? And I'm not sure about command shells, that's probably just wrong and they came later.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

ajsalminen 9y ago

That's true but the text editing part is modeless as opposed to how vi and it's kin do it. Of course even that can be changed and Spacemacs has recently made it a fairly popular choice.

gumby 9y ago

"Modeless" is used as a term of art here: when entering text there is no difference between entering and editing (as opposed to, say, vi which separates editing and navigation from entry). Word and TextEdit are modeless editors. What Emacs calls "modes" have indeed been around for a long time; I started using Emacs in 1978 as it happens and did use it to read my mail. However ITS didn't have the concept of "shell" (the command entry system was also the debugger!) nor of "inferior" processes so you would exit EMACS to compile or run other programs.

omaranto 9y ago
Are you saying the term modeless only applies to text editing? I thought it was a general UI term that can be applied to any program and means that keystrokes always mean the same thing independent of context. In that case, Emacs as a whole is not modeless, but usually each individual buffer is. And sorry for getting the history wrong. I think I mixed the ITS and Multics versions up. Maybe the email reader was only in the ITS version and the Multics version had the ability to call the PL/I or Fortran compiler within Emacs and get a buffer with an error list. Does that sound right? And I'm not sure about command shells, that's probably just wrong and they came later.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]