19 ms·

Emacs 26.2 Released

491 points by lelf 8y ago

triska 8y ago
Thank you so much for Emacs, and congratulations on the new release! Emacs is reliable, fast and elegant, and a joy to use as a truly integrated environment for all kinds of tasks, including software development.
AceJohnny2 8y ago
I'm really happy to see Emacs move faster, and especially the integration of package management since version 25. The old beast is still kicking! For what it's worth, I've actually been using on macOS the Mituharu branch [1], available in MacPorts as "emacs-mac-app". This version adds the [s]essential[/s] smooth-scrolling feature, and just in general seems to be slightly better integrated into macOS (except that it doesn't define the standard macOS keybindings, which I had to create manually. Ironic) [1] https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/ https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/
- AceJohnny2 8y ago
  Since it was painful to do, here's what I put in my .emacs to bring back macOS Cmd-keybindings in Mituharu's Emacs: ; Configure shortcuts if we're using Mituharu's Mac port of Emacs (when (eq window-system 'mac) (progn (message "Setting emacs-mac keybindings") (setq mac-option-modifier 'meta) ;supposedly setting this to 'nil gives them back to OS X, but that didn't work for me (setq mac-command-modifier 'super) (global-set-key (kbd "s-q") 'save-buffers-kill-emacs) ;I hate ⌘-w killing a window, too close to alt-w (copy). Deactivated ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-w" 'delete-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-a") 'mark-whole-buffer) (global-set-key (kbd "s-s") 'save-buffer) (global-set-key (kbd "s-d") 'isearch-repeat-backward) (global-set-key (kbd "s-f") 'isearch-forward) (global-set-key (kbd "s-g") 'isearch-repeat-forward) (global-set-key (kbd "s-z") 'undo) (global-set-key (kbd "s-x") 'kill-region) (global-set-key (kbd "s-c") 'kill-ring-save) ;ns has ns-copy-including-secondary, on mac- port, kill-ring-save works the same (global-set-key (kbd "s-v") 'yank) (global-set-key (kbd "s-y") 'yank) ;ns-paste-secondary (global-set-key (kbd "s-u") 'revert-buffer) ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-o") 'ns-open-file-using-panel) ;no good alternative ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-p") 'ns-print-buffer) ;no good alternative ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-h") 'ns-do-hide-emacs) ;done by default (global-set-key (kbd "s-j") 'exchange-point-and-mark) (global-set-key (kbd "s-k") 'kill-this-buffer) (global-set-key (kbd "s-l") 'goto-line) (global-set-key (kbd "s-n") 'make-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-m") 'iconify-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-`") 'other-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-,") 'customize) (global-set-key (kbd "s-'") 'next-multiframe-window) ) )
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - roryokane 8y ago
    If you use Spacemacs, it can define a similar set of keybindings for you with its ‘osx’ layer (https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/layers/%2Bos/osx https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/layers/%2B...). To enable that layer, open your Spacemacs dotfile with ‘SPC f e d’, then add ‘osx’ to the list within the ‘dotspacemacs-configuration-layers’ variable.
- caiob 8y ago
  Is MacPorts still a thing?
- ddavis 8y ago
  I used Mitsuharu Yamamoto's emacs-mac distribution for some time (due to a suggestion I saw here on HN a while ago), but the upstream nextstep build (from the main GNU Emacs repository) actually feels a bit smoother/snappier to me, so I switched back a couple of months ago.
- manish_gill 8y ago
  Emacs is the one environment that I've been a fan of from afar. I recognize the brilliance and power of it, but a few things have always kept me away from using it on the Mac. And I've put in serious attempts, including going emacs-only, then a custom evil mode, then spacemacs - - The server mode compatibility with the way Mac applications are set up. I'd ideally want an emacs server running in the background, and a client app open/close seamlessly whenever I'd like. What actually ends up happening is that I close the client windows but the app never "quits". So it's a zombie icon always hanging around my cmd+tab list. - "Windows" (or Frames?) have generally not worked seamlessly for me. I've to always put in hacks in my config to ensure the emacs windows work like other apps do for mac. They're either too small and then size up when config is applied (which has some latency so it's noticeable when it happens), or they don't work at all. - Font rendering. There is some minute rendering difference in the way the same fonts that renders on Vim/iTerm/Macvim/Sublime/VSCode/IntelliJ, but it's the worse by far on my emacs. :( - All of these complaints are for the GUI mode tbh, which I prefer to use since I like to keep my terminal separate from my editor. Terminal-only emacs is something I tried a few years ago and I remember getting annoyed by keybinding issues etc. Maybe all of the above are old issues that are no longer present, or maybe I was doing things the wrong way. It just never felt like it was a seamlessly integrated application on the Mac. I hope that has changed or will change. :)
  - bobbylarrybobby 8y ago
    Issue #1 was annoying for me, so I hacked together the following solution: write an emacs function that detects situations where you feel emacs should quit (e.g., no windows left) and have it kill itself and the server when this happens. Then, write a launch agent to poll if the server is running and start it if not (pgrep is cheap enough that you can do this every few seconds). Finally, write an Automator app that will be your launch point for emacs, which receives files and opens them using the server. It’s an annoying fix but when done right it feels exactly like emacs is a native app.
    - snazz 8y ago
      If you could package it up nicely, maybe one of the Emacs distributions would consider upstreaming your solution. I doubt that the pure-GNU Emacs maintainers would be too happy about it considering RMS’s choice to remove Mac- and Windows- specific API usages since they gave the nonfree OSs an “advantage”.
- andbberger 8y ago
  spacemacs
- na85 8y ago
  All I need is a way to call elisp functions from the touch bar.
  - roryokane 8y ago
    You can define custom touch bar buttons with BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai/ https://folivora.ai/), and configure them to run a custom shell script. There is probably some way to call Emacs functions via shell script. However, be warned, BTT’s interface is messy and the buttons it creates don’t look right unless you manually adjust the styling yourself. Also, macOS won’t show BTT’s buttons unless you either allow BTT to take over your whole Touch Bar, hiding Apple’s global buttons, or you expand the BTT toolbar beforehand, which must be closed before you next try to press the Esc key.
- roryokane 8y ago
  To install that “emacs-mac” branch of Emacs with the Homebrew package manager, see the instructions on https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport. Homebrew’s built-in formula directory doesn’t include that version of Emacs, so that linked repo is a “tap” that defines a formula for it. From the README of that repo, these were the only commands I needed to run: brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport brew cask install emacs-mac
merlincorey 8y ago
> - In Dired, the 'Z' command on a directory name compresses all of its files. Dired is so handy, but it does so much. Unless I were to use this feature often enough I fear I would never remember it was there and just break out to a terminal and `tar -zcf` manually. I feel like something already exists for this, but it would be cool if there was a "Random Mode Tip of The Day" that one could invoke for discovery and practice of things like this.
- laughingman2 8y ago
  Nice feature for emacs home screen or scratch buffer to display a tip of the day ..
  - egh 8y ago
    https://github.com/egh/emacs-totd https://github.com/egh/emacs-totd or https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay Could be modified to show, e.g. dired commands as well.
    - laughingman2 8y ago
      lol! Not at all surprised, if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it.
      - RHSeeger 8y ago
        https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
        RHSeeger 8y ago
        Given the downvote, I guess my intention wasn't clear. I was agreeing that > if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it. Anything Ive looked for has been out there, excepting some truly specialized things (fontification for custom file formats)
laughingman2 8y ago
As someone who recently saw the light, and converted to Emacs (spacemacs), I am absolutely delighted that its going strong. Emacs is the most delightful software I have ever used. I could evolve a flexible todo management productivity workflow, start writing a journal and start writing new posts in a distraction free environment all using Org Mode in just two days. A complete win for someone who went back to paper (rather unsuccessfully) to organize to-dos after finding digital tools inflexible. And for python development on remote machine, I get editing and autocomplete on remote systems out of the box (spacemacs) due to Tramp. I was like wtf, why didn't I start using this beautiful piece of software years back. The way Emacs is a programmable platform really changes how I view what a good software should be. For instance, I was documenting a machine learning experiment in org mode file. I wanted to mention a metrics result generated as json by my machine learning code. I could just embed sh into the org file, execute it (on the remote machine without friction) and print result directly into the org file. I can trivially compare results in two files and record it back into org mode easily, even on a remote system. It has made me think that we need more software which erases distinction of programming as something distinct from using software.
- nextos 8y ago
  Emacs is really nice because it's essentially a text-mode Lisp machine with lots of small packages that integrate really well with each other. This contrasts with ncurses based CLI tools, which are little silos. And of course, most GUI applications. In particular, I'm really fond of Org, Magit, Notmuch and PDF-Tools. I feel they are really nice additions to classic Emacs. Some old packages are really nice too. E.g. AucTeX, Gnus, Calc, Dired, Eshell... Although I feel Eshell and Gnus would really benefit from some refactorings. And of course the myriad of programming modes. I feel I don't need much more than Emacs, Firefox and a tiling window manager on top of some underlying OS (preferably Unix).
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Holy crap. I had no idea pdftools was a thing. And interleve mode. Brilliant.
jes 8y ago
I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I wonder what kind of programs get to follow you for so many decades.
  - jes 8y ago
    For me, the only software that I have used consistently since that era (~1981 or so) would be UNIX and the C programming language. And to be honest, I don't write that much straight C anymore.
    - juststeve 8y ago
      What language do you write now?
      - jes 8y ago
        It's a mix of C++, Python and Perl, plus writing documents in LaTeX, Org-Mode, etc. I enjoy programming in Common Lisp, too, but that's something I do mostly for pleasure. GNU Emacs has good support for programming in Common Lisp via SLIME.
  - kickingvegas 8y ago
    make is for better or worse, forever.
  - brlewis 8y ago
    Just bash, the command-line tools one uses from bash, LaTeX, and emacs/vim. I think git will stick around for decades even though its predecessors didn't.
andrenth 8y ago
What’s a good resource for learning emacs for someone who’s been using vim for more than 20 years?
- deleted 8y ago
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  - deleted 8y ago
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- raphinou 8y ago
  I've started to use spacemacs and like it (I'm also a long time vim user)
- ballpark 8y ago
  I'm not sure about resources, but there's a mode called evil mode that has vim bindings. That would be a good thing to google.
- coliveira 8y ago
  My guess is that someone that has used vim for more than 20 years will never feel truly comfortable with emacs. I say this having started with emacs for a few years, and since switched to vim, now for almost 20 years.
  - tcoff91 8y ago
    What about evil mode? Also spacemacs has evil bindings for all of its emacs packages.
    - coliveira 8y ago
      Vi(m) is not just a set of key bindings. It is also a philosophy of text editing that is much more integrated with the command line. You cannot replicate it entirely in other editors.
bdarnell 8y ago
Here's the NEWS file for the curious: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/NEWS?h=emacs-26 http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/NEWS?h=e...
- josteink 8y ago
  Thanks. Weird it not being linked directly in the post. “ New variable 'xft-ignore-color-fonts'. Default t means don't try to load color fonts when using Xft, as they often cause crashes. Set it to nil if you really need those fonts.” I see they finally caved in (although in a quite pedantly trying not to way) and allowed use of color-fonts. Whee!
  - anoncake 8y ago
    Was the problem not that no free OS supported color fonts properly? Emacs does not belong to the Monochrome Font Foundation, after all. Disabling a feature because it causes crashes is not ideological.
- deleted 8y ago
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anoncake 8y ago
> - Emacs is now compliant with the latest version 11.0 of the Unicode Standard. http://blog.unicode.org/2019/03/announcing-unicode-standard-version-120.html http://blog.unicode.org/2019/03/announcing-unicode-standard-...
pnw_hazor 8y ago
I had been away from emacs for almost 10 years since I stopped being a pro programmer. And even back then I wasn't really an emacs power-user. I just knew enough to be productive and slightly dangerous. Recently, I reached my last nerve with MS Word and buckled down to ditch Word for emacs. Today I do just about all my writing in emacs (markdown) and then generate word docx using pandoc at the end. Now, I use emacs all day everyday -- blessed. And I am more productive especially since I am actively pushing to keep increasing my power-user level.
- fredsir 8y ago
  You should check out org: https://orgmode.org/ https://orgmode.org/
- black-tea 8y ago
  Writing markdown with emacs is a huge step up. Now you get to take another big step up when you use org-mode instead of markdown. I'm actually pretty envious.
  - bloopernova 8y ago
    I use org-mode for todo items, but haven't been using emacs for long. What does org-mode do with writing documents that is better than Markdown?
    - snazz 8y ago
      For one example that I like to cite, install Org-Babel and play around with a Jupyter-notebook-esque interface within your document. When you’re done, GitHub will render it statically like they do Markdown.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    I use org-mode for note taking and some task tracking. My main doc writing setup is more like an ide setup. markdown<->docx with pandoc lets me use a ref-doc.docx file that ensures all the styling I need for legal docs gets into the word doc. So you make a markdown file from the ref-doc.docx then edit the markdown file and convert to docx using the same ref-doc and everything in docx has the correct style, and stuff like line numbers and headers are preserved. Pretty sweet.
bbbobbb 8y ago
I wish I spent time learning how to use Emacs in the past to a degree where customizing my installation was faster than learning something else. As I stand now, it seems really hard to justify to invest time into it when the benefits over using something very easy to work with (like JetBrains IDEs for Java or VS Code for Python) sound marginal. I know experts can fly around in it and it looks amazing. Having a single point of entry for all kinds of things (ssh to VM, git, text editing, org mode, email...) sounds great, but it is so much work and it seems like I could always be spending time doing something immediately beneficial with the tools I already use. Not to mention that the end result might not even better for the given application (can I really hope to have easier time developing a Go app with Emacs and couple not-so-actively developed plugins than GoLand/VS Code?).
- rusk 8y ago
  I think you’re best of sticking with Jetbrains IMO; if you’re using a highly structured language like java you may as well get the beenifits of a specialised environment. For nearly everything else though emacs shines. I see VS Code touted as an emacs alternative and while your muscle memory might suit it better can it truly give you the uniform fluid experience across pretty much any development enviromnwnt you might use?
- black-tea 8y ago
  I am so glad that I took the time to learn emacs during my uni days more than ten years ago. I would see everyone else using absolutely awful IDEs that they never actually understood while I was learning how everything really worked and setting up emacs to make my life easier. Nowadays I see people struggling with slightly less bad tools like VSCode and they often ask me about emacs but they just don't have the time to learn it like I did. I probably wouldn't have the time now either. And before the VSCode fanboys downvote me, the other day my colleague's VSCode instance was using more than 200GB of virtual memory. When I typed on his editor it was noticeably laggy. He told me it was normal. He had five files open. My emacs had been running for two weeks at that point and had about 200 files, 5 shells, 2 ssh sessions and 1 IRC client going on. Seriously, guys. The reason why you like VSCode is the same reason we like emacs. Come and use the real thing.
sys_64738 8y ago
I've been using Emacs in some form since the Amiga build of uEmacs in 1985.
- rudolfwinestock 8y ago
  Did you hear about Vim when it showed up on Fred Fish disks? By the way, I like your user name. How odd that I remember that command.
billfruit 8y ago
Is the multi threaded implementation, being talked about for some time part of this release? Sometimes the single threaded nature of emacs causes problems while running complex setups like cider, nrepl etc.
- nine_k 8y ago
  There are several rewrites. - Guile Emacs does not seem very alive: http://git.hcoop.net/?p=bpt/emacs.git http://git.hcoop.net/?p=bpt/emacs.git - Remacs, a Rust port, seems to be more alive: https://github.com/remacs/remacs https://github.com/remacs/remacs Does not look usable as a daily driver, though. I sometimes wish that Xi editor adopted an elisp port as one of the scripting engines. Not very likely, though; a suitable port does not exist in the first place so far.
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Remacs is supposed to be an in-place re-write, so it should be just as usable as upstream.
    - nine_k 8y ago
      Wow, I should try it then :) OTOH, being an in-place rewrite, it likely cannot afford to change some of the more important architectural decisions, very likely including the ones that prevent multithreading.
      - steveklabnik 8y ago
        Well, yes and no; the more that gets into Rust, the more that can be refactored. I don’t know much about the details though.
- peterbecich 8y ago
  Not from this release, but this is the most recent thing I've been able to find about concurrency: > This is also only the first step in bringing threading to Emacs Lisp. Right now there’s effectively a global interpreter lock (GIL), and threads only run one at a time cooperatively. Like with generators, the Python influence is obvious. In theory, sometime in the future this interpreter lock will be removed, making way for actual concurrency. https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/05/31/ https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/05/31/
willtim 8y ago
Congratulations and a huge thank you to all those involved! Emacs is a truly remarkable piece of software. I started using it for text editing over 20 years ago, now I use it pretty much as an operating system!
codr7 8y ago
M-x replace-string, Orgmode and Slime. I have yet to come across anything that compares, and I definitely prefer having Lisp built in to Python bolted on to the side. Emacs used to be considered quite slow, but compared to the latest offerings its pretty snappy. Never got it to work well in Windows, but that's not an issue for me anymore.
mruts 8y ago
The best emacs mode I’ve ever used is org-mode. Inline LaTeX rendering, inline images, outlines, TODOs, it’s amazing. And when you add yasnippet in to the mix, it gets even better. I can write up math notes faster than someone could write it on a blackboard! Emacs is probably the best piece of software I’ve ever used, and will use. I bet in 100 years, emacs will still be going strong. There’s really nothing it can’t do.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Operating systems will come and go, and Emacs will remain.
vincentpants 8y ago
I love Emacs! I just wish it had a decent text editor…
- jaux 8y ago
  evil-mode will provide you an amazing editor
deleted 8y ago
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jakeinspace 8y ago
I'm so thankful that I stumbled upon emacs in my first year of undergrad. That discovery led me to the wonderful world of Lisp, and really impacted how I view software design and the development process. As a C/C++, Clojure, Verilog/VHDL, and org-mode tool, I can't imagine using anything else. Python is the only use case that I haven't been 100% satisfied with, although I don't think Pycharm or VS code offer anything more compelling to me (could be wrong).
- ajross 8y ago
  The world is so different now. In my first year of undergrad, you didn't "stumble" on emacs. It was the tool of the demigods that worked on the software you could only read about on usenet. Everyone knew emacs was best, if you could get your admin to install it. It's what we all dreamed of using some day. So needless to say it was the first thing I tried when I got my shell account. I got stuck in it, couldn't figure anything out, and had to power cycle the terminal before sneaking away sheepishly. But yeah, emacs is best, and I'm still using it now that I know how to exit.
- black-tea 8y ago
  Do you use elpy for python? It's pretty good.
  - jakeinspace 8y ago
    I do, I just haven't found the project navigation and jumping to definitions/uses to be quite as complete as helm and gtags are for C/C++.
bitwize 8y ago
Ah, Emacs -- the king of editors. IDEs come and go, but I've found nothing that has yet convinced me to leave the editor that got me started in Linux development during the 90s, in which I've done all of my best work ever since. Yes, I've tried VSCode -- several times. The difference between Emacs and VSCode is that one is an extensible editor, the other was built from the ground up to be shaped and morphed to match your workflow, no matter what that may be. Emacs Lisp is an always-on, instantaneous-feedback, comprehensive extension language -- and it's a Lisp, even if a flawed one. Emacs is also self-documenting and self-debugging, making extending it an easy part of using it. If you type M-. on any Elisp identifier, you will be taken straight to its definition -- even for C-implemented primitives of the Lisp VM (provided you have the Emacs sources and Emacs knows where they live). Emacs is thus open source in a more concretely real way than most open source software -- it makes examinjng its own source easy and even inviting. The way things are going, I figure either Emacs will die or I will before I stop using it. I guess I'm a set-in-my-ways old-timer. So be it.
singingfish 8y ago
Picked up emacs in 1993 in a unix lab because it was the only thing that remotely made sense on these weird X-Windows systems. Was a good choice because I haven't had to learn anything new since. When I met RMS I thanked him for it.
dan-robertson 8y ago
This is a reasonably small release, I don’t have anything to say about it so I will instead do what most other people in this thread have done and make a general comment about emacs: I think emacs has a few simple advantages: 1. It’s based on a high quality extensible programming language which supports writing extensible programs. This makes implementing new features, new language features, or just modifying/fixing existing ones possible and usually easy. 2. The primitives/idioms (hooks,buffers,buffer-local-variables,markers,interactive functions,advice,keymaps,text properties) tended to be good choices that allow separate modes/programs within the editor to interact well with one another. They also allow easy extension/modification/fixing of the system. I think modules (although useful and maybe necessary) do not typically fit into this category. 3. Emacs realises the idea of a programming environment built into a user interface (ie one where it is easy to interact with the user in a way that is not stdin/out). I feel like this is often touted as an advantage of html/JavaScript but in emacs one already has all the other useful programs/libraries to base one’s own creations on. On the web one always has to start from scratch. On the other hand elisp does not have any GL/canvas interface (although you can write an svg (or worse) and display it). 4. The documentation tends to be pretty good and when the documentation fails Emacs certainly has disadvantages too. One is setting it up, another is that it often breaks and it can be hard to get used to emacs. I personally am not bothered by these because I already know enough to not mind/struggle much fixing things. Another issue is ide features but I don’t really use languages with separate ides (unless you count languages where emacs is the ide) so I don’t mind this. Indeed I mostly don’t use any of the ide attempt features like projectile or the static code parsing/analysis
- logicchains 8y ago
  Another huge advantage: low resource use. I'm often running resource-hungry machine learning and dataprocessing jobs on my laptop (and Slack), and when ram usage gets high often VSCode or Jetbeans IDEs will just freeze up, often requiring a restart (especially C++ Intelllisense). I've switched to Emacs exclusively now for coding (C++, Python and Julia), and the productivity gains from having a rock-solid editor that never freezes or crashes more than outweight the reduced featureset. To be fair though this seems not entirely the IDEs' problem, as I used to encounter this problem less on Windows; Linux just seems particularly bad at providing a smooth desktop experience when RAM usage is high.
EnzoKronus 8y ago
Es un buen editor. Actualmente uso distribuciones. ya que soy principiante. Uso https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d y tambien probe prelude emacs.
ngngngng 8y ago
I'm a heavy user for a vim for the last few years. Is emacs worth checking out to potentially switch to? Or should I just stick with what I'm already productive with?
- ageofwant 8y ago
  You can have the best of both by installing evil-mode. Or try out http://spacemacs.org http://spacemacs.org, which has evil as a default layer.
- babarock 8y ago
  Depends what you're looking for. If you want blazing fast text-editing, you're better off learning advanced vim features like jumps, macros, registers ... If you care about integration with other text-based tools (like email, instant messaging, source control, code review, IRC, ...) then switching to emacs will transform your workflow. There are a couple of emacs modes that stand out, and in my opinion make emacs worth it: * Org-mode (https://orgmode.org https://orgmode.org): A note taking system * Magit (https://magit.vc/ https://magit.vc/) the best git client I've ever used.
prirun 8y ago
I first used Emacs on a Prime minicomputer in the late 70's. It was ported to Prime by Dan Bricklan's Software Arts, Inc, of Visicalc fame. Still using it 41 years later. For anyone curious, the Prime version of Emacs is running on a Prime emulator I set up. Telnet to em.prirun.org port 8002
- JohnL4 8y ago
  Me too! Except around 1982. :-) Memories....
creamidea 8y ago
Congratulations :) When I installed the emacs on MacOS by the step at https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#macos https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#macos (`brew install emacs --with-cocoa`). I got an `Error: invalid options: --with-cocoa` Finally, I found the solution here: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/47774/13172 https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/47774/13172. Now, I want to know who can modify this command at the official site. PS: Homebrew 2.1.0 Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 024e26; last commit 2019-04-13) Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision 20182; last commit 2019-04-13)
JohnL4 8y ago
Holy cow, the olds came out of the woodwork. Good to see, because I'm one, too. 57, been using emacs since 1982 or so. Mostly org-mode these days, plus whatever weird hobby language thing I'm doing (Haskell, now). Swapping control & caps lock is essential. I got really painful RSI pain in my first pinky joint before I did that. Sounds silly until it happens. And my config file.... :-)
roryokane 8y ago
Beyond the “Highlights of this release include” section in the announcement, the full changelog for Emacs 26.2 is in this NEWS file: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.26.2 https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.26.2.

491 points by lelf 8y ago

Thank you so much for Emacs, and congratulations on the new release! Emacs is reliable, fast and elegant, and a joy to use as a truly integrated environment for all kinds of tasks, including software development.

AceJohnny2 8y ago

I'm really happy to see Emacs move faster, and especially the integration of package management since version 25. The old beast is still kicking! For what it's worth, I've actually been using on macOS the Mituharu branch [1], available in MacPorts as "emacs-mac-app". This version adds the [s]essential[/s] smooth-scrolling feature, and just in general seems to be slightly better integrated into macOS (except that it doesn't define the standard macOS keybindings, which I had to create manually. Ironic) [1] https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/ https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/

AceJohnny2 8y ago
Since it was painful to do, here's what I put in my .emacs to bring back macOS Cmd-keybindings in Mituharu's Emacs: ; Configure shortcuts if we're using Mituharu's Mac port of Emacs (when (eq window-system 'mac) (progn (message "Setting emacs-mac keybindings") (setq mac-option-modifier 'meta) ;supposedly setting this to 'nil gives them back to OS X, but that didn't work for me (setq mac-command-modifier 'super) (global-set-key (kbd "s-q") 'save-buffers-kill-emacs) ;I hate ⌘-w killing a window, too close to alt-w (copy). Deactivated ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-w" 'delete-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-a") 'mark-whole-buffer) (global-set-key (kbd "s-s") 'save-buffer) (global-set-key (kbd "s-d") 'isearch-repeat-backward) (global-set-key (kbd "s-f") 'isearch-forward) (global-set-key (kbd "s-g") 'isearch-repeat-forward) (global-set-key (kbd "s-z") 'undo) (global-set-key (kbd "s-x") 'kill-region) (global-set-key (kbd "s-c") 'kill-ring-save) ;ns has ns-copy-including-secondary, on mac- port, kill-ring-save works the same (global-set-key (kbd "s-v") 'yank) (global-set-key (kbd "s-y") 'yank) ;ns-paste-secondary (global-set-key (kbd "s-u") 'revert-buffer) ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-o") 'ns-open-file-using-panel) ;no good alternative ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-p") 'ns-print-buffer) ;no good alternative ;(global-set-key (kbd "s-h") 'ns-do-hide-emacs) ;done by default (global-set-key (kbd "s-j") 'exchange-point-and-mark) (global-set-key (kbd "s-k") 'kill-this-buffer) (global-set-key (kbd "s-l") 'goto-line) (global-set-key (kbd "s-n") 'make-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-m") 'iconify-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-`") 'other-frame) (global-set-key (kbd "s-,") 'customize) (global-set-key (kbd "s-'") 'next-multiframe-window) ) )
- deleted 8y ago
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- roryokane 8y ago
  If you use Spacemacs, it can define a similar set of keybindings for you with its ‘osx’ layer (https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/layers/%2Bos/osx https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/layers/%2B...). To enable that layer, open your Spacemacs dotfile with ‘SPC f e d’, then add ‘osx’ to the list within the ‘dotspacemacs-configuration-layers’ variable.
caiob 8y ago
Is MacPorts still a thing?
ddavis 8y ago
I used Mitsuharu Yamamoto's emacs-mac distribution for some time (due to a suggestion I saw here on HN a while ago), but the upstream nextstep build (from the main GNU Emacs repository) actually feels a bit smoother/snappier to me, so I switched back a couple of months ago.
manish_gill 8y ago
Emacs is the one environment that I've been a fan of from afar. I recognize the brilliance and power of it, but a few things have always kept me away from using it on the Mac. And I've put in serious attempts, including going emacs-only, then a custom evil mode, then spacemacs - - The server mode compatibility with the way Mac applications are set up. I'd ideally want an emacs server running in the background, and a client app open/close seamlessly whenever I'd like. What actually ends up happening is that I close the client windows but the app never "quits". So it's a zombie icon always hanging around my cmd+tab list. - "Windows" (or Frames?) have generally not worked seamlessly for me. I've to always put in hacks in my config to ensure the emacs windows work like other apps do for mac. They're either too small and then size up when config is applied (which has some latency so it's noticeable when it happens), or they don't work at all. - Font rendering. There is some minute rendering difference in the way the same fonts that renders on Vim/iTerm/Macvim/Sublime/VSCode/IntelliJ, but it's the worse by far on my emacs. :( - All of these complaints are for the GUI mode tbh, which I prefer to use since I like to keep my terminal separate from my editor. Terminal-only emacs is something I tried a few years ago and I remember getting annoyed by keybinding issues etc. Maybe all of the above are old issues that are no longer present, or maybe I was doing things the wrong way. It just never felt like it was a seamlessly integrated application on the Mac. I hope that has changed or will change. :)
- bobbylarrybobby 8y ago
  Issue #1 was annoying for me, so I hacked together the following solution: write an emacs function that detects situations where you feel emacs should quit (e.g., no windows left) and have it kill itself and the server when this happens. Then, write a launch agent to poll if the server is running and start it if not (pgrep is cheap enough that you can do this every few seconds). Finally, write an Automator app that will be your launch point for emacs, which receives files and opens them using the server. It’s an annoying fix but when done right it feels exactly like emacs is a native app.
  - snazz 8y ago
    If you could package it up nicely, maybe one of the Emacs distributions would consider upstreaming your solution. I doubt that the pure-GNU Emacs maintainers would be too happy about it considering RMS’s choice to remove Mac- and Windows- specific API usages since they gave the nonfree OSs an “advantage”.
andbberger 8y ago
spacemacs
na85 8y ago
All I need is a way to call elisp functions from the touch bar.
- roryokane 8y ago
  You can define custom touch bar buttons with BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai/ https://folivora.ai/), and configure them to run a custom shell script. There is probably some way to call Emacs functions via shell script. However, be warned, BTT’s interface is messy and the buttons it creates don’t look right unless you manually adjust the styling yourself. Also, macOS won’t show BTT’s buttons unless you either allow BTT to take over your whole Touch Bar, hiding Apple’s global buttons, or you expand the BTT toolbar beforehand, which must be closed before you next try to press the Esc key.
roryokane 8y ago
To install that “emacs-mac” branch of Emacs with the Homebrew package manager, see the instructions on https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport. Homebrew’s built-in formula directory doesn’t include that version of Emacs, so that linked repo is a “tap” that defines a formula for it. From the README of that repo, these were the only commands I needed to run: brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport brew cask install emacs-mac

merlincorey 8y ago

> - In Dired, the 'Z' command on a directory name compresses all of its files. Dired is so handy, but it does so much. Unless I were to use this feature often enough I fear I would never remember it was there and just break out to a terminal and `tar -zcf` manually. I feel like something already exists for this, but it would be cool if there was a "Random Mode Tip of The Day" that one could invoke for discovery and practice of things like this.

laughingman2 8y ago
Nice feature for emacs home screen or scratch buffer to display a tip of the day ..
- egh 8y ago
  https://github.com/egh/emacs-totd https://github.com/egh/emacs-totd or https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay Could be modified to show, e.g. dired commands as well.
  - laughingman2 8y ago
    lol! Not at all surprised, if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it.
    - RHSeeger 8y ago
      https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
      - RHSeeger 8y ago
        Given the downvote, I guess my intention wasn't clear. I was agreeing that > if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it. Anything Ive looked for has been out there, excepting some truly specialized things (fontification for custom file formats)

laughingman2 8y ago

As someone who recently saw the light, and converted to Emacs (spacemacs), I am absolutely delighted that its going strong. Emacs is the most delightful software I have ever used. I could evolve a flexible todo management productivity workflow, start writing a journal and start writing new posts in a distraction free environment all using Org Mode in just two days. A complete win for someone who went back to paper (rather unsuccessfully) to organize to-dos after finding digital tools inflexible. And for python development on remote machine, I get editing and autocomplete on remote systems out of the box (spacemacs) due to Tramp. I was like wtf, why didn't I start using this beautiful piece of software years back. The way Emacs is a programmable platform really changes how I view what a good software should be. For instance, I was documenting a machine learning experiment in org mode file. I wanted to mention a metrics result generated as json by my machine learning code. I could just embed sh into the org file, execute it (on the remote machine without friction) and print result directly into the org file. I can trivially compare results in two files and record it back into org mode easily, even on a remote system. It has made me think that we need more software which erases distinction of programming as something distinct from using software.

nextos 8y ago
Emacs is really nice because it's essentially a text-mode Lisp machine with lots of small packages that integrate really well with each other. This contrasts with ncurses based CLI tools, which are little silos. And of course, most GUI applications. In particular, I'm really fond of Org, Magit, Notmuch and PDF-Tools. I feel they are really nice additions to classic Emacs. Some old packages are really nice too. E.g. AucTeX, Gnus, Calc, Dired, Eshell... Although I feel Eshell and Gnus would really benefit from some refactorings. And of course the myriad of programming modes. I feel I don't need much more than Emacs, Firefox and a tiling window manager on top of some underlying OS (preferably Unix).
- rayiner 8y ago
  Holy crap. I had no idea pdftools was a thing. And interleve mode. Brilliant.

jes 8y ago

I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.

agumonkey 8y ago
I wonder what kind of programs get to follow you for so many decades.
- jes 8y ago
  For me, the only software that I have used consistently since that era (~1981 or so) would be UNIX and the C programming language. And to be honest, I don't write that much straight C anymore.
  - juststeve 8y ago
    What language do you write now?
    - jes 8y ago
      It's a mix of C++, Python and Perl, plus writing documents in LaTeX, Org-Mode, etc. I enjoy programming in Common Lisp, too, but that's something I do mostly for pleasure. GNU Emacs has good support for programming in Common Lisp via SLIME.
- kickingvegas 8y ago
  make is for better or worse, forever.
- brlewis 8y ago
  Just bash, the command-line tools one uses from bash, LaTeX, and emacs/vim. I think git will stick around for decades even though its predecessors didn't.

andrenth 8y ago

What’s a good resource for learning emacs for someone who’s been using vim for more than 20 years?

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raphinou 8y ago
I've started to use spacemacs and like it (I'm also a long time vim user)
ballpark 8y ago
I'm not sure about resources, but there's a mode called evil mode that has vim bindings. That would be a good thing to google.
coliveira 8y ago
My guess is that someone that has used vim for more than 20 years will never feel truly comfortable with emacs. I say this having started with emacs for a few years, and since switched to vim, now for almost 20 years.
- tcoff91 8y ago
  What about evil mode? Also spacemacs has evil bindings for all of its emacs packages.
  - coliveira 8y ago
    Vi(m) is not just a set of key bindings. It is also a philosophy of text editing that is much more integrated with the command line. You cannot replicate it entirely in other editors.

bdarnell 8y ago

Here's the NEWS file for the curious: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/NEWS?h=emacs-26 http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/NEWS?h=e...

josteink 8y ago
Thanks. Weird it not being linked directly in the post. “ New variable 'xft-ignore-color-fonts'. Default t means don't try to load color fonts when using Xft, as they often cause crashes. Set it to nil if you really need those fonts.” I see they finally caved in (although in a quite pedantly trying not to way) and allowed use of color-fonts. Whee!
- anoncake 8y ago
  Was the problem not that no free OS supported color fonts properly? Emacs does not belong to the Monochrome Font Foundation, after all. Disabling a feature because it causes crashes is not ideological.
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anoncake 8y ago

> - Emacs is now compliant with the latest version 11.0 of the Unicode Standard. http://blog.unicode.org/2019/03/announcing-unicode-standard-version-120.html http://blog.unicode.org/2019/03/announcing-unicode-standard-...

pnw_hazor 8y ago

I had been away from emacs for almost 10 years since I stopped being a pro programmer. And even back then I wasn't really an emacs power-user. I just knew enough to be productive and slightly dangerous. Recently, I reached my last nerve with MS Word and buckled down to ditch Word for emacs. Today I do just about all my writing in emacs (markdown) and then generate word docx using pandoc at the end. Now, I use emacs all day everyday -- blessed. And I am more productive especially since I am actively pushing to keep increasing my power-user level.

fredsir 8y ago
You should check out org: https://orgmode.org/ https://orgmode.org/
black-tea 8y ago
Writing markdown with emacs is a huge step up. Now you get to take another big step up when you use org-mode instead of markdown. I'm actually pretty envious.
- bloopernova 8y ago
  I use org-mode for todo items, but haven't been using emacs for long. What does org-mode do with writing documents that is better than Markdown?
  - snazz 8y ago
    For one example that I like to cite, install Org-Babel and play around with a Jupyter-notebook-esque interface within your document. When you’re done, GitHub will render it statically like they do Markdown.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  I use org-mode for note taking and some task tracking. My main doc writing setup is more like an ide setup. markdown<->docx with pandoc lets me use a ref-doc.docx file that ensures all the styling I need for legal docs gets into the word doc. So you make a markdown file from the ref-doc.docx then edit the markdown file and convert to docx using the same ref-doc and everything in docx has the correct style, and stuff like line numbers and headers are preserved. Pretty sweet.

bbbobbb 8y ago

I wish I spent time learning how to use Emacs in the past to a degree where customizing my installation was faster than learning something else. As I stand now, it seems really hard to justify to invest time into it when the benefits over using something very easy to work with (like JetBrains IDEs for Java or VS Code for Python) sound marginal. I know experts can fly around in it and it looks amazing. Having a single point of entry for all kinds of things (ssh to VM, git, text editing, org mode, email...) sounds great, but it is so much work and it seems like I could always be spending time doing something immediately beneficial with the tools I already use. Not to mention that the end result might not even better for the given application (can I really hope to have easier time developing a Go app with Emacs and couple not-so-actively developed plugins than GoLand/VS Code?).

rusk 8y ago
I think you’re best of sticking with Jetbrains IMO; if you’re using a highly structured language like java you may as well get the beenifits of a specialised environment. For nearly everything else though emacs shines. I see VS Code touted as an emacs alternative and while your muscle memory might suit it better can it truly give you the uniform fluid experience across pretty much any development enviromnwnt you might use?
black-tea 8y ago
I am so glad that I took the time to learn emacs during my uni days more than ten years ago. I would see everyone else using absolutely awful IDEs that they never actually understood while I was learning how everything really worked and setting up emacs to make my life easier. Nowadays I see people struggling with slightly less bad tools like VSCode and they often ask me about emacs but they just don't have the time to learn it like I did. I probably wouldn't have the time now either. And before the VSCode fanboys downvote me, the other day my colleague's VSCode instance was using more than 200GB of virtual memory. When I typed on his editor it was noticeably laggy. He told me it was normal. He had five files open. My emacs had been running for two weeks at that point and had about 200 files, 5 shells, 2 ssh sessions and 1 IRC client going on. Seriously, guys. The reason why you like VSCode is the same reason we like emacs. Come and use the real thing.

sys_64738 8y ago

I've been using Emacs in some form since the Amiga build of uEmacs in 1985.

rudolfwinestock 8y ago
Did you hear about Vim when it showed up on Fred Fish disks? By the way, I like your user name. How odd that I remember that command.

billfruit 8y ago

Is the multi threaded implementation, being talked about for some time part of this release? Sometimes the single threaded nature of emacs causes problems while running complex setups like cider, nrepl etc.

nine_k 8y ago
There are several rewrites. - Guile Emacs does not seem very alive: http://git.hcoop.net/?p=bpt/emacs.git http://git.hcoop.net/?p=bpt/emacs.git - Remacs, a Rust port, seems to be more alive: https://github.com/remacs/remacs https://github.com/remacs/remacs Does not look usable as a daily driver, though. I sometimes wish that Xi editor adopted an elisp port as one of the scripting engines. Not very likely, though; a suitable port does not exist in the first place so far.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Remacs is supposed to be an in-place re-write, so it should be just as usable as upstream.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Wow, I should try it then :) OTOH, being an in-place rewrite, it likely cannot afford to change some of the more important architectural decisions, very likely including the ones that prevent multithreading.
    - steveklabnik 8y ago
      Well, yes and no; the more that gets into Rust, the more that can be refactored. I don’t know much about the details though.
peterbecich 8y ago
Not from this release, but this is the most recent thing I've been able to find about concurrency: > This is also only the first step in bringing threading to Emacs Lisp. Right now there’s effectively a global interpreter lock (GIL), and threads only run one at a time cooperatively. Like with generators, the Python influence is obvious. In theory, sometime in the future this interpreter lock will be removed, making way for actual concurrency. https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/05/31/ https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/05/31/

willtim 8y ago

Congratulations and a huge thank you to all those involved! Emacs is a truly remarkable piece of software. I started using it for text editing over 20 years ago, now I use it pretty much as an operating system!

codr7 8y ago

M-x replace-string, Orgmode and Slime. I have yet to come across anything that compares, and I definitely prefer having Lisp built in to Python bolted on to the side. Emacs used to be considered quite slow, but compared to the latest offerings its pretty snappy. Never got it to work well in Windows, but that's not an issue for me anymore.

mruts 8y ago

The best emacs mode I’ve ever used is org-mode. Inline LaTeX rendering, inline images, outlines, TODOs, it’s amazing. And when you add yasnippet in to the mix, it gets even better. I can write up math notes faster than someone could write it on a blackboard! Emacs is probably the best piece of software I’ve ever used, and will use. I bet in 100 years, emacs will still be going strong. There’s really nothing it can’t do.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Operating systems will come and go, and Emacs will remain.

vincentpants 8y ago

I love Emacs! I just wish it had a decent text editor…

jaux 8y ago
evil-mode will provide you an amazing editor

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jakeinspace 8y ago

I'm so thankful that I stumbled upon emacs in my first year of undergrad. That discovery led me to the wonderful world of Lisp, and really impacted how I view software design and the development process. As a C/C++, Clojure, Verilog/VHDL, and org-mode tool, I can't imagine using anything else. Python is the only use case that I haven't been 100% satisfied with, although I don't think Pycharm or VS code offer anything more compelling to me (could be wrong).

ajross 8y ago
The world is so different now. In my first year of undergrad, you didn't "stumble" on emacs. It was the tool of the demigods that worked on the software you could only read about on usenet. Everyone knew emacs was best, if you could get your admin to install it. It's what we all dreamed of using some day. So needless to say it was the first thing I tried when I got my shell account. I got stuck in it, couldn't figure anything out, and had to power cycle the terminal before sneaking away sheepishly. But yeah, emacs is best, and I'm still using it now that I know how to exit.
black-tea 8y ago
Do you use elpy for python? It's pretty good.
- jakeinspace 8y ago
  I do, I just haven't found the project navigation and jumping to definitions/uses to be quite as complete as helm and gtags are for C/C++.

bitwize 8y ago

Ah, Emacs -- the king of editors. IDEs come and go, but I've found nothing that has yet convinced me to leave the editor that got me started in Linux development during the 90s, in which I've done all of my best work ever since. Yes, I've tried VSCode -- several times. The difference between Emacs and VSCode is that one is an extensible editor, the other was built from the ground up to be shaped and morphed to match your workflow, no matter what that may be. Emacs Lisp is an always-on, instantaneous-feedback, comprehensive extension language -- and it's a Lisp, even if a flawed one. Emacs is also self-documenting and self-debugging, making extending it an easy part of using it. If you type M-. on any Elisp identifier, you will be taken straight to its definition -- even for C-implemented primitives of the Lisp VM (provided you have the Emacs sources and Emacs knows where they live). Emacs is thus open source in a more concretely real way than most open source software -- it makes examinjng its own source easy and even inviting. The way things are going, I figure either Emacs will die or I will before I stop using it. I guess I'm a set-in-my-ways old-timer. So be it.

singingfish 8y ago

Picked up emacs in 1993 in a unix lab because it was the only thing that remotely made sense on these weird X-Windows systems. Was a good choice because I haven't had to learn anything new since. When I met RMS I thanked him for it.

dan-robertson 8y ago

This is a reasonably small release, I don’t have anything to say about it so I will instead do what most other people in this thread have done and make a general comment about emacs: I think emacs has a few simple advantages: 1. It’s based on a high quality extensible programming language which supports writing extensible programs. This makes implementing new features, new language features, or just modifying/fixing existing ones possible and usually easy. 2. The primitives/idioms (hooks,buffers,buffer-local-variables,markers,interactive functions,advice,keymaps,text properties) tended to be good choices that allow separate modes/programs within the editor to interact well with one another. They also allow easy extension/modification/fixing of the system. I think modules (although useful and maybe necessary) do not typically fit into this category. 3. Emacs realises the idea of a programming environment built into a user interface (ie one where it is easy to interact with the user in a way that is not stdin/out). I feel like this is often touted as an advantage of html/JavaScript but in emacs one already has all the other useful programs/libraries to base one’s own creations on. On the web one always has to start from scratch. On the other hand elisp does not have any GL/canvas interface (although you can write an svg (or worse) and display it). 4. The documentation tends to be pretty good and when the documentation fails Emacs certainly has disadvantages too. One is setting it up, another is that it often breaks and it can be hard to get used to emacs. I personally am not bothered by these because I already know enough to not mind/struggle much fixing things. Another issue is ide features but I don’t really use languages with separate ides (unless you count languages where emacs is the ide) so I don’t mind this. Indeed I mostly don’t use any of the ide attempt features like projectile or the static code parsing/analysis

logicchains 8y ago
Another huge advantage: low resource use. I'm often running resource-hungry machine learning and dataprocessing jobs on my laptop (and Slack), and when ram usage gets high often VSCode or Jetbeans IDEs will just freeze up, often requiring a restart (especially C++ Intelllisense). I've switched to Emacs exclusively now for coding (C++, Python and Julia), and the productivity gains from having a rock-solid editor that never freezes or crashes more than outweight the reduced featureset. To be fair though this seems not entirely the IDEs' problem, as I used to encounter this problem less on Windows; Linux just seems particularly bad at providing a smooth desktop experience when RAM usage is high.

EnzoKronus 8y ago

Es un buen editor. Actualmente uso distribuciones. ya que soy principiante. Uso https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d y tambien probe prelude emacs.

ngngngng 8y ago

I'm a heavy user for a vim for the last few years. Is emacs worth checking out to potentially switch to? Or should I just stick with what I'm already productive with?

ageofwant 8y ago
You can have the best of both by installing evil-mode. Or try out http://spacemacs.org http://spacemacs.org, which has evil as a default layer.
babarock 8y ago
Depends what you're looking for. If you want blazing fast text-editing, you're better off learning advanced vim features like jumps, macros, registers ... If you care about integration with other text-based tools (like email, instant messaging, source control, code review, IRC, ...) then switching to emacs will transform your workflow. There are a couple of emacs modes that stand out, and in my opinion make emacs worth it: * Org-mode (https://orgmode.org https://orgmode.org): A note taking system * Magit (https://magit.vc/ https://magit.vc/) the best git client I've ever used.

prirun 8y ago

I first used Emacs on a Prime minicomputer in the late 70's. It was ported to Prime by Dan Bricklan's Software Arts, Inc, of Visicalc fame. Still using it 41 years later. For anyone curious, the Prime version of Emacs is running on a Prime emulator I set up. Telnet to em.prirun.org port 8002

JohnL4 8y ago
Me too! Except around 1982. :-) Memories....

creamidea 8y ago

Congratulations :) When I installed the emacs on MacOS by the step at https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#macos https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#macos (`brew install emacs --with-cocoa`). I got an `Error: invalid options: --with-cocoa` Finally, I found the solution here: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/47774/13172 https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/47774/13172. Now, I want to know who can modify this command at the official site. PS: Homebrew 2.1.0 Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 024e26; last commit 2019-04-13) Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision 20182; last commit 2019-04-13)

JohnL4 8y ago

Holy cow, the olds came out of the woodwork. Good to see, because I'm one, too. 57, been using emacs since 1982 or so. Mostly org-mode these days, plus whatever weird hobby language thing I'm doing (Haskell, now). Swapping control & caps lock is essential. I got really painful RSI pain in my first pinky joint before I did that. Sounds silly until it happens. And my config file.... :-)

roryokane 8y ago

Beyond the “Highlights of this release include” section in the announcement, the full changelog for Emacs 26.2 is in this NEWS file: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.26.2 https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.26.2.