5 ms·

I'm not sure if Emacs qualifies as an editor for saving time. As you say yourself, Emacs people tend to play a lot with customization (and Emacs didn't seem use

by gnull 5y ago

I'm not sure if Emacs qualifies as an editor for saving time. As you say yourself, Emacs people tend to play a lot with customization (and Emacs didn't seem useful with default config to me; what the hack is C-x 2?). At the same time, it doesn't add anything useful to editing itself. It's basically scriptable MS Notepad. Try a text editor that does something for text editing, not scripting. Vim is an option. I personally used Kakoune with (almost) default config for some 3 years and I'm sure it saved me a lot of time. I never redefined default keys, they were good enough, I only added a few user mode bindings. (Although I felt a lack of some features over that time; Kakoune with no plugins is a bit too minimalistic.) Recently I spent a few days setting up LSP and some useful plugins, now I'm going to forget about customization for few more months again.

daptaq 5y ago
> At the same time, it doesn't add anything useful to editing itself. It's basically scriptable MS Notepad. I don't know, fill-paragraph (M-q), the sexp commands, transpose commands, upcase-downcase-capitalize commands, indent-rigidly are all built-in, bound by default and I use them a lot. And let's not forget Macros.
- gnull 5y ago
  Vim provides a different, more efficient modal language for talking to the editor (which Kakoune further improves). Emacs on the other hand doesn't, it just gives you some ad-hoc shortcuts. Emacs's language is no different from the one of Notepad or VS Code. It's the language of insert mode + scripted shortcuts. Shortcuts can improve your experience, yes, but not in such a fundamental way as a new model of editing. UPD. For example, the Emacs way of dealing with tables in markdown/latex is to have a custom plugin which will have a separate shortcut for each action one might want. As a consequence, you need to remember the keys for each of them. Kakoune, on the other hand, gives you a language that can express most of those operations naturally. And the language is no different than the one you use for other everyday tasks, no need to memorize new shortcuts.
  - gnubison 5y ago
    > it just gives you some ad-hoc shortcuts Give me M-q any day over gqap (or, if you're inside a multiline comment, 3gqq; or, if you're inside a multiline comment starting on the same line as code, just giving up). Edit: though I have to admit that I'm missing 'dt.', 'd/something', etc.
    - cosmojg 5y ago
      Have you tried Evil?
    - karthink 5y ago
      'df.' is simulated with M-z (zap-to-char). There's also a zap-up-to-char command that corresponds to 'dt.', but it's not bound to anything by default. There's no doubt that it's all ad hoc though. 'd/something' is doable with C-s something RET C-w, but it's already getting tedious in comparison.
      - gnubison 5y ago
        Thanks for the tip about zap-up-to-char. > 'd/something' is doable with C-s something RET C-w Doesn't this need to be C-s something C-r RET C-w? Because C-s positions the cursor at the end of the search match.
  - daptaq 5y ago
    > it just gives you some ad-hoc shortcuts What do you mean by ad-hoc? They seem to me be chosen and bound by default, because they are useful in practice. > Kakoune, on the other hand, gives you a language that can express most of those operations naturally. And the language is no different than the one you use for other everyday tasks, no need to memorize new shortcuts. Could you point me to some example? And I am not sure if what you say about Emacs is necessarily true, you could have a minor mode that modifies the default keys to work with text tables. Org-mode's table implementation is a good example for that.
    - gnull 5y ago
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > fill-paragraph (M-q), I use C-u-M-q. I prefer that text layout.
Scarbutt 5y ago
Emacs and Vim are both equally efficient at text editing, I don't think you gave Emacs a fair shot. OTOH, VSCocde is frustrating to use if you are proficient at vim/emacs.
pmontra 5y ago
> Emacs people tend to play a lot with customization I used to do that when I was young. Lots of elisp. Then I threw away a lot of customizations I didn't use anymore, added packages for the languages I'm using now and I think I ended up with a straightforward configuration.

by gnull 5y ago

daptaq 5y ago

> At the same time, it doesn't add anything useful to editing itself. It's basically scriptable MS Notepad. I don't know, fill-paragraph (M-q), the sexp commands, transpose commands, upcase-downcase-capitalize commands, indent-rigidly are all built-in, bound by default and I use them a lot. And let's not forget Macros.

gnull 5y ago
Vim provides a different, more efficient modal language for talking to the editor (which Kakoune further improves). Emacs on the other hand doesn't, it just gives you some ad-hoc shortcuts. Emacs's language is no different from the one of Notepad or VS Code. It's the language of insert mode + scripted shortcuts. Shortcuts can improve your experience, yes, but not in such a fundamental way as a new model of editing. UPD. For example, the Emacs way of dealing with tables in markdown/latex is to have a custom plugin which will have a separate shortcut for each action one might want. As a consequence, you need to remember the keys for each of them. Kakoune, on the other hand, gives you a language that can express most of those operations naturally. And the language is no different than the one you use for other everyday tasks, no need to memorize new shortcuts.
- gnubison 5y ago
  > it just gives you some ad-hoc shortcuts Give me M-q any day over gqap (or, if you're inside a multiline comment, 3gqq; or, if you're inside a multiline comment starting on the same line as code, just giving up). Edit: though I have to admit that I'm missing 'dt.', 'd/something', etc.
  - cosmojg 5y ago
    Have you tried Evil?
  - karthink 5y ago
    'df.' is simulated with M-z (zap-to-char). There's also a zap-up-to-char command that corresponds to 'dt.', but it's not bound to anything by default. There's no doubt that it's all ad hoc though. 'd/something' is doable with C-s something RET C-w, but it's already getting tedious in comparison.
    - gnubison 5y ago
      Thanks for the tip about zap-up-to-char. > 'd/something' is doable with C-s something RET C-w Doesn't this need to be C-s something C-r RET C-w? Because C-s positions the cursor at the end of the search match.
- daptaq 5y ago
  > it just gives you some ad-hoc shortcuts What do you mean by ad-hoc? They seem to me be chosen and bound by default, because they are useful in practice. > Kakoune, on the other hand, gives you a language that can express most of those operations naturally. And the language is no different than the one you use for other everyday tasks, no need to memorize new shortcuts. Could you point me to some example? And I am not sure if what you say about Emacs is necessarily true, you could have a minor mode that modifies the default keys to work with text tables. Org-mode's table implementation is a good example for that.
  - gnull 5y ago
lelanthran 5y ago
> fill-paragraph (M-q), I use C-u-M-q. I prefer that text layout.

Scarbutt 5y ago

Emacs and Vim are both equally efficient at text editing, I don't think you gave Emacs a fair shot. OTOH, VSCocde is frustrating to use if you are proficient at vim/emacs.

pmontra 5y ago

> Emacs people tend to play a lot with customization I used to do that when I was young. Lots of elisp. Then I threw away a lot of customizations I didn't use anymore, added packages for the languages I'm using now and I think I ended up with a straightforward configuration.