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Maybe this is a dumb question, but do Emacs users edit all their configuration files and quick edits in it too? When I'm setting up / configuring Linux boxes a

by b3b0p 16y ago

Maybe this is a dumb question, but do Emacs users edit all their configuration files and quick edits in it too? When I'm setting up / configuring Linux boxes at work I always use Vim because it's always there and light weight. I always got the impression using Emacs for this would be the equal of using Visual Studio or Eclipse.

sjs 16y ago
To me Emacs feels like a text editor. I used to use vim for coding before switching to Emacs (well, TextMate and then Emacs). I still use vim for editing on remote machines and quick local edits. There certainly are people who edit everything in Emacs though, I'm just not one of them.
angusgr 16y ago
I use the lightweight emacs alternative 'zile' a lot, I have it installed on both my desktop machines (alongside emacs) and also on some tiny machines like OpenWRT routers where I don't want an emacs install. It loads totally instantly whereas my emacs configuration is ~0.5s, so if I'm really just jumping into a file for something very simple and then out again, I use that. One step up in complexity is to alias something as 'emacs -nw' (emacs start in console mode.) Which is almost as quick (depending on your startup files), but you've got all your nice custom .emacs configuration there. Then, there's the fact you can run emacs in server mode and then your emacs editor windows are just connecting back to a server process and not loading up anything at all. Finally, there's the fact that a true emacs user would already be interacting with their shell in emacs shell-mode, so they wouldn't need to load anything at all. Zen moment
gchpaco 16y ago
Traditionally one has a single, long running Emacs process that you do everything in, even quick edits. If you had to wait for it to start up from scratch then yeah, that would be pretty annoying. My fingers frequently go `sudo vi ...' because I'm not used to using the sudo mode in TRAMP, but that would arguably be my deficiency, not Emacs.
- limmeau 16y ago
  emacsclient helps with that style of work. It sends the editing job to the running emacs.

by b3b0p 16y ago

sjs 16y ago

To me Emacs feels like a text editor. I used to use vim for coding before switching to Emacs (well, TextMate and then Emacs). I still use vim for editing on remote machines and quick local edits. There certainly are people who edit everything in Emacs though, I'm just not one of them.

angusgr 16y ago

I use the lightweight emacs alternative 'zile' a lot, I have it installed on both my desktop machines (alongside emacs) and also on some tiny machines like OpenWRT routers where I don't want an emacs install. It loads totally instantly whereas my emacs configuration is ~0.5s, so if I'm really just jumping into a file for something very simple and then out again, I use that. One step up in complexity is to alias something as 'emacs -nw' (emacs start in console mode.) Which is almost as quick (depending on your startup files), but you've got all your nice custom .emacs configuration there. Then, there's the fact you can run emacs in server mode and then your emacs editor windows are just connecting back to a server process and not loading up anything at all. Finally, there's the fact that a true emacs user would already be interacting with their shell in emacs shell-mode, so they wouldn't need to load anything at all. Zen moment

gchpaco 16y ago

Traditionally one has a single, long running Emacs process that you do everything in, even quick edits. If you had to wait for it to start up from scratch then yeah, that would be pretty annoying. My fingers frequently go `sudo vi ...' because I'm not used to using the sudo mode in TRAMP, but that would arguably be my deficiency, not Emacs.

limmeau 16y ago
emacsclient helps with that style of work. It sends the editing job to the running emacs.