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It's odd to me that Emacs wasn't mentioned at all. I use it for most of my computing (email, music, file management, etc.) and it works well enough in the term

It's odd to me that Emacs wasn't mentioned at all. I use it for most of my computing (email, music, file management, etc.) and it works well enough in the terminal if the Meta-key works properly, as opposed to needing to use Escape. >Luckily, people were emailing each other from UNIX/Linux machines long before modern graphical email clients (or webmail) even existed. I suppose this is technically true, due to the use of ''modern'' here, but I find it important to note that graphical interfaces for things such as email have existed for decades. Using terminals shouldn't be an ideal. I find the native terminal emulation provided by the Linux kernel and OpenBSD to be lacking. There's not much of a good reason to query terminfo or termcap when every terminal you're reasonably going to use supports a superset of ECMA-48. However, I've found that even basic sequences such as SCROLL UP and SCROLL DOWN aren't supported in the native terminals. So, you get the choice between your program not working in those, making it inefficient and jittery for every terminal, or building a querying infrastructure; the first option is what I've chosen. If I'm wrong or anyone has any advice for this, I'd be interested in it. I wouldn't be writing a terminal program in this age if the GUI facilities of modern systems were decent and I could build up my own abstraction for that, but the terminal, with all of its added faults, is at least the simpler option. It would be nice to have facilities GUIs enjoy that let me express simple concepts such as ''The interface must be at least this large.'', though.

merlincorey 7y ago
> It's odd to me that Emacs wasn't mentioned at all. I use it for most of my computing (email, music, file management, etc.) and it works well enough in the terminal if the Meta-key works properly, as opposed to needing to use Escape. Yes, and literally every point on his list has something in Emacs to handle it -- it is my favorite operating system, just needs a good text editor, as the old joke goes. Sure, not all of the in-emacs tools are as nice as some of things like `w3m` and `w3m-image`... but they are all there, for every facet listed, and some of them are even better in Emacs. Old joke aside, I bet Emacs' text editing and word processing abilities (with some packages installed) are as good as or better than those found in WordGrinder. Emacs plays nice with `tmux`, but also provides its own in-emacs windowing. You can even run full ANSI terminals within Emacs and then run anything (such as `cmus`) that might not have a direct in-emacs integration within an Emacs terminal buffer.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > and some of them are even better in Emacs. Even if not, interoperability is the killer feature of Emacs as a platform. Just try to shuttle data between spreadsheet, e-mail and web-browser with the tools mentioned above. In Emacs it's trivial - and not only that, it's also trivial to write snippets of elisp that shuttle the data for you or otherwise automate whatever workflow you have.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "Just try to shuttle data between spreadsheet, e-mail and web-browser with the tools mentioned above" Have you ever tried MS Office + VBA for comparison purposes?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I did! Elisp is a better language :). Microsoft does understand interoperability; Office suite integrates well together and applications respect power users. I like them for that.
- mcbuilder 7y ago
  Ironically though in this case, emacs doesn't play nearly as nice itself though when run without X or it's GUI. I used nox-emacs for years before finally giving up and switched to the GUI. For instance, w3m will only display images when you are in a GUI window, where I've gotten w3m from a proper frame buffer displaying fine.
bin0 7y ago
I'm just gonna drop this here... vim is better. Surprising some one hasn't started the obligatory flame war all ready. For what it's worth, it's a lot better now that it has a built-in terminal and async for plugins. Neovim has some nice features too. I guess it's preference, but my preference is right.
- samdixon 7y ago
  Emacs and vim are entirely different things. I wouldn’t want to use vim for some of the things you can do in emacs(although technically possible). Vim is a better text editor, but fortunately you are able to use vim inside emacs.
  - bin0 7y ago
    Fair enough. I just don't get the idea of emacs replacing a shell. > you are able to use vim inside emacs It physically hurt to read this.
quietthrow 7y ago
What’s odd is why anyone would want to live in a terminal? It would be great if somebody can articulate that crisply. Ps I love working in the terminal too but see it hard nosed to do everything there.
- pizza 7y ago
  I find programming arbitrary combinations of programs to work together (i.e. processing information through some flowchart) much more productive and easier with terminal interfaces than GUIs. Terminal interfaces are also easier to use remotely, in my experience. Otherwise, they're good or bad depending upon the program implementation in question.
- mping 7y ago
  Lower cognitive load iif the terminal interface is good. Thats a big if. I prefer terminal for git and file management; for programming sometimes i like ides more.
admax88q 7y ago
Running emacs in a terminal defeats the entire notion of "without a GUI" Emacs in a terminal is still a GUI, its just one that is poorly drawn using characters for every cell rather than using pixels. If you're going to use a GUI then why not use one that can render at a pixel level. Any sort of "curses" interface in a terminal is a GUI.

merlincorey 7y ago

> It's odd to me that Emacs wasn't mentioned at all. I use it for most of my computing (email, music, file management, etc.) and it works well enough in the terminal if the Meta-key works properly, as opposed to needing to use Escape. Yes, and literally every point on his list has something in Emacs to handle it -- it is my favorite operating system, just needs a good text editor, as the old joke goes. Sure, not all of the in-emacs tools are as nice as some of things like `w3m` and `w3m-image`... but they are all there, for every facet listed, and some of them are even better in Emacs. Old joke aside, I bet Emacs' text editing and word processing abilities (with some packages installed) are as good as or better than those found in WordGrinder. Emacs plays nice with `tmux`, but also provides its own in-emacs windowing. You can even run full ANSI terminals within Emacs and then run anything (such as `cmus`) that might not have a direct in-emacs integration within an Emacs terminal buffer.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> and some of them are even better in Emacs. Even if not, interoperability is the killer feature of Emacs as a platform. Just try to shuttle data between spreadsheet, e-mail and web-browser with the tools mentioned above. In Emacs it's trivial - and not only that, it's also trivial to write snippets of elisp that shuttle the data for you or otherwise automate whatever workflow you have.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "Just try to shuttle data between spreadsheet, e-mail and web-browser with the tools mentioned above" Have you ever tried MS Office + VBA for comparison purposes?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I did! Elisp is a better language :). Microsoft does understand interoperability; Office suite integrates well together and applications respect power users. I like them for that.
mcbuilder 7y ago
Ironically though in this case, emacs doesn't play nearly as nice itself though when run without X or it's GUI. I used nox-emacs for years before finally giving up and switched to the GUI. For instance, w3m will only display images when you are in a GUI window, where I've gotten w3m from a proper frame buffer displaying fine.

bin0 7y ago

I'm just gonna drop this here... vim is better. Surprising some one hasn't started the obligatory flame war all ready. For what it's worth, it's a lot better now that it has a built-in terminal and async for plugins. Neovim has some nice features too. I guess it's preference, but my preference is right.

samdixon 7y ago
Emacs and vim are entirely different things. I wouldn’t want to use vim for some of the things you can do in emacs(although technically possible). Vim is a better text editor, but fortunately you are able to use vim inside emacs.
- bin0 7y ago
  Fair enough. I just don't get the idea of emacs replacing a shell. > you are able to use vim inside emacs It physically hurt to read this.

quietthrow 7y ago

What’s odd is why anyone would want to live in a terminal? It would be great if somebody can articulate that crisply. Ps I love working in the terminal too but see it hard nosed to do everything there.

pizza 7y ago
I find programming arbitrary combinations of programs to work together (i.e. processing information through some flowchart) much more productive and easier with terminal interfaces than GUIs. Terminal interfaces are also easier to use remotely, in my experience. Otherwise, they're good or bad depending upon the program implementation in question.
mping 7y ago
Lower cognitive load iif the terminal interface is good. Thats a big if. I prefer terminal for git and file management; for programming sometimes i like ides more.

admax88q 7y ago

Running emacs in a terminal defeats the entire notion of "without a GUI" Emacs in a terminal is still a GUI, its just one that is poorly drawn using characters for every cell rather than using pixels. If you're going to use a GUI then why not use one that can render at a pixel level. Any sort of "curses" interface in a terminal is a GUI.