6 ms·

been using emacs for several years... What could be improved is speed. Too many times it doesn't see some keys combinations I hit. Screen redraw should be faste

by wiz21c 5y ago

been using emacs for several years... What could be improved is speed. Too many times it doesn't see some keys combinations I hit. Screen redraw should be faster too (I spend a lot of time in front of it so that kind of "detail" is actually important). Loading big files is slow. Editing long lines is slow. Of course it doesn't happen often but when it happens it's annoying. Emacs could also propose options to better align on common behaviors (for example C-left/right arrow) doesn't behave like in other editors. It could also be more "discoverable". There are hundreds of functions so that 100% of my needs are covered. But every now and then, when I want to find a command, I DuckDuckGo it... It'd be nicer if somehow there would be an assisted navigation in the commands (or a pointer to that assistance I've been sorely missing :-)) But I like it anyway. 'cos it's faithful, community grown, etc. And if I had time I would contribute. But emacs is an old platform so there are many choices buried in and reaching the level of knowledge necessary to contribute is probably very high...

Tomte 5y ago
> What could be improved is speed. Native compilation is coming in the next version and should help quite a bit.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  I'm already on the 28.0 branch, makes no visible difference (my workflow is rather basic : editing lots of code, bits of org mode, bits of WL)
  - daptaq 5y ago
    Are you sure you have libgccjit installed and configure found it?
    - wiz21c 5y ago
      My configure's config.log says : #define HAVE_LIBGCCJIT 1 #define HAVE_LIBGCCJIT_H 1 So, yep it has it.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  i think running as a server should be made default. i imagine that alot of people are opening alot of seperate instances
  - lloda 5y ago
    I don't run Emacs as a server because it freezes occasionally and it's very painful to have a couple dozen windows in eight workspaces go down. If I could rely on Emacs never freezing, I'd be happy to run it as a server.
    - lvass 5y ago
      I have init manage an emacs daemon but open separate emacs instances if it's doing something important, even though it practically never freezes for me. I think this works fine as long as you don't have server-start in your config.
kryptiskt 5y ago
"Buttery Smooth Emacs" contains some insight into what goes on under the surface of Emacs and is a great read: https://m.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/buttery-smooth-emacs/10155313440066102/ https://m.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/buttery-smoot...
abdullahkhalids 5y ago
> It could also be more "discoverable". I definitely agree that I want to type some string and it should show a fuzzy search from all available commands and their descriptions. That would be huge timesaver for functionality I know exist, but I forgot the exact commands.
- uncletaco 5y ago
  This is literally what `M-x` does. You want to do the same for functions? `C-h f`. Variables? `C-h v`. Keybindings for the current mode? `C-h ?`. If I'm not mistaken when you install vanilla Emacs the screen even includes a tutorial and guided tour that both tell you these commands.
  - trey-jones 5y ago
    Yes, once you make the connection between every single keypress invoking an elisp function, and the various help combinations (variables, functions, keystrokes as you mention), I think Emacs is actually the most "discoverable" editor that I've used.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    Except when the name of what you look for doesn't match your mental model (yep, I'm in the group of people who think software should adapt to human and not the other way around) Example : I want to change the encoding of a file when I load it... Good luck figuring that out without resorting to reading the documentation.
    - uncletaco 5y ago
      And here I would argue that, since the documentation is included with Emacs and can be pulled up in the editor, this is still a point towards its inherent discoverability. Again when you load emacs there's a link to the manual on its splash screen and as a guided tour. A lot of people rush to turn off this screen or suppress the menues on startup (which I get, the menu bar is pretty ugly) but they do have useful functionality for someone who doesn't know Emacs.
yakubin 5y ago
> been using emacs for several years... What could be improved is speed. Same here. Long lines are especially painful. And it's quite surprising what Emacs considers a "long line". I have a file in my project with tests, where I have an array, with each element of the array on a separate line, averaging at around 125 characters per line (some of them weird Unicode characters, so not just ASCII). There are 52 lines of it. And when I scroll down the file with C-v (Page Down basically) it scrolls quickly up until I get close to this place, then I get something like 1.5 seconds delay while it's hanging there. It's ridiculous. Another thing is how easy it is to freeze Emacs into being completely unusable when editing files over Tramp (with remote work it's the go-to solution), caused by an unreliable connection. Mostly it happens when the underlying VPN connection is dropped. When that happens, Emacs freezes with no explanation whatsoever. I can only guess what happened. C-g, Esc, nothing works, regardless whether the VPN connection is restored or not. The only solution at this point is killing this instance of Emacs. Specifically for this purpose I crafted a one-liner to kill the right instance of Emacs[1] (the one under the mouse pointer): kill $(xdotool getwindowpid $(xdotool getmouselocation | cut -d : -f 5)) Also, magit is painfully slow. When using it, I always wonder if Emacs is frozen again, or if it's just magit being magit. It's a shame Fork is not available for Linux. [1]: The other instance of Emacs is used for tracking in org-mode the time I spend on different tasks. I used to do it all in a single instance, but then I kept losing that data due to Emacs freezing like that, so I started using a separate instance for the time-tracking. I really think Emacs should be a multi-process application to prevent such situations.
- lloda 5y ago
  xkill ? But I agree. Emacs should be faster.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    I didn't know of xkill. Thanks!
- jpeloquin 5y ago
  > some of them weird Unicode characters, so not just ASCII This makes me suspicious that it's the font cache causing the slowdown (assuming Windows), not long lines. I saw similar symptoms a couple years ago and fixed it with (setq inhibit-compacting-font-caches t). You could also try increasing the garbage collection threshold on the theory that the lag is a gc pause. I've used: (setq gc-cons-threshold (* 511 1024 1024)) (setq gc-cons-percentage 0.5) (run-with-idle-timer 5 t #'garbage-collect)
rightbyte 5y ago
Have you tried "native Emacs", AoT compiled with libgccjit?
shrimpx 5y ago
> Too many times it doesn't see some keys combinations I hit. This caught my eye because I tend to think the opposite of this statement. Emacs doesn't skip a beat on text input -- unlike say VSCode which has perceivable input lag. In my experience, when Emacs gets slow it's a configuration problem, like flychecking on every keystroke, or a slow/poorly written third-party package. Raw emacs is blazing fast. Disclaimer: I use `emacs -nw` -- no GUI toolkits.
BeetleB 5y ago
> It could also be more "discoverable". There are hundreds of functions so that 100% of my needs are covered. But every now and then, when I want to find a command, I DuckDuckGo it Have you tried the apropos command? For me, often using helm/ido and trying to guess actually leads me to the correct command. I personally haven't even tried apropos, so I don't know how good it is.

by wiz21c 5y ago

Tomte 5y ago

> What could be improved is speed. Native compilation is coming in the next version and should help quite a bit.

wiz21c 5y ago
I'm already on the 28.0 branch, makes no visible difference (my workflow is rather basic : editing lots of code, bits of org mode, bits of WL)
- daptaq 5y ago
  Are you sure you have libgccjit installed and configure found it?
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    My configure's config.log says : #define HAVE_LIBGCCJIT 1 #define HAVE_LIBGCCJIT_H 1 So, yep it has it.
medo-bear 5y ago
i think running as a server should be made default. i imagine that alot of people are opening alot of seperate instances
- lloda 5y ago
  I don't run Emacs as a server because it freezes occasionally and it's very painful to have a couple dozen windows in eight workspaces go down. If I could rely on Emacs never freezing, I'd be happy to run it as a server.
  - lvass 5y ago
    I have init manage an emacs daemon but open separate emacs instances if it's doing something important, even though it practically never freezes for me. I think this works fine as long as you don't have server-start in your config.

kryptiskt 5y ago

"Buttery Smooth Emacs" contains some insight into what goes on under the surface of Emacs and is a great read: https://m.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/buttery-smooth-emacs/10155313440066102/ https://m.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/buttery-smoot...

abdullahkhalids 5y ago

> It could also be more "discoverable". I definitely agree that I want to type some string and it should show a fuzzy search from all available commands and their descriptions. That would be huge timesaver for functionality I know exist, but I forgot the exact commands.

uncletaco 5y ago
This is literally what `M-x` does. You want to do the same for functions? `C-h f`. Variables? `C-h v`. Keybindings for the current mode? `C-h ?`. If I'm not mistaken when you install vanilla Emacs the screen even includes a tutorial and guided tour that both tell you these commands.
- trey-jones 5y ago
  Yes, once you make the connection between every single keypress invoking an elisp function, and the various help combinations (variables, functions, keystrokes as you mention), I think Emacs is actually the most "discoverable" editor that I've used.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  Except when the name of what you look for doesn't match your mental model (yep, I'm in the group of people who think software should adapt to human and not the other way around) Example : I want to change the encoding of a file when I load it... Good luck figuring that out without resorting to reading the documentation.
  - uncletaco 5y ago
    And here I would argue that, since the documentation is included with Emacs and can be pulled up in the editor, this is still a point towards its inherent discoverability. Again when you load emacs there's a link to the manual on its splash screen and as a guided tour. A lot of people rush to turn off this screen or suppress the menues on startup (which I get, the menu bar is pretty ugly) but they do have useful functionality for someone who doesn't know Emacs.

yakubin 5y ago

> been using emacs for several years... What could be improved is speed. Same here. Long lines are especially painful. And it's quite surprising what Emacs considers a "long line". I have a file in my project with tests, where I have an array, with each element of the array on a separate line, averaging at around 125 characters per line (some of them weird Unicode characters, so not just ASCII). There are 52 lines of it. And when I scroll down the file with C-v (Page Down basically) it scrolls quickly up until I get close to this place, then I get something like 1.5 seconds delay while it's hanging there. It's ridiculous. Another thing is how easy it is to freeze Emacs into being completely unusable when editing files over Tramp (with remote work it's the go-to solution), caused by an unreliable connection. Mostly it happens when the underlying VPN connection is dropped. When that happens, Emacs freezes with no explanation whatsoever. I can only guess what happened. C-g, Esc, nothing works, regardless whether the VPN connection is restored or not. The only solution at this point is killing this instance of Emacs. Specifically for this purpose I crafted a one-liner to kill the right instance of Emacs[1] (the one under the mouse pointer): kill $(xdotool getwindowpid $(xdotool getmouselocation | cut -d : -f 5)) Also, magit is painfully slow. When using it, I always wonder if Emacs is frozen again, or if it's just magit being magit. It's a shame Fork is not available for Linux. [1]: The other instance of Emacs is used for tracking in org-mode the time I spend on different tasks. I used to do it all in a single instance, but then I kept losing that data due to Emacs freezing like that, so I started using a separate instance for the time-tracking. I really think Emacs should be a multi-process application to prevent such situations.

lloda 5y ago
xkill ? But I agree. Emacs should be faster.
- yakubin 5y ago
  I didn't know of xkill. Thanks!
jpeloquin 5y ago
> some of them weird Unicode characters, so not just ASCII This makes me suspicious that it's the font cache causing the slowdown (assuming Windows), not long lines. I saw similar symptoms a couple years ago and fixed it with (setq inhibit-compacting-font-caches t). You could also try increasing the garbage collection threshold on the theory that the lag is a gc pause. I've used: (setq gc-cons-threshold (* 511 1024 1024)) (setq gc-cons-percentage 0.5) (run-with-idle-timer 5 t #'garbage-collect)

rightbyte 5y ago

Have you tried "native Emacs", AoT compiled with libgccjit?

shrimpx 5y ago

> Too many times it doesn't see some keys combinations I hit. This caught my eye because I tend to think the opposite of this statement. Emacs doesn't skip a beat on text input -- unlike say VSCode which has perceivable input lag. In my experience, when Emacs gets slow it's a configuration problem, like flychecking on every keystroke, or a slow/poorly written third-party package. Raw emacs is blazing fast. Disclaimer: I use `emacs -nw` -- no GUI toolkits.

BeetleB 5y ago

> It could also be more "discoverable". There are hundreds of functions so that 100% of my needs are covered. But every now and then, when I want to find a command, I DuckDuckGo it Have you tried the apropos command? For me, often using helm/ido and trying to guess actually leads me to the correct command. I personally haven't even tried apropos, so I don't know how good it is.