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Where's the pragmatism? I personally don't open GB size files (that's not true, I sometimes do but it depends on the format and I tend to use vim (which is a v

Where's the pragmatism? I personally don't open GB size files (that's not true, I sometimes do but it depends on the format and I tend to use vim (which is a very minimal configuration on my system these days, since I've moved to Emacs) for them because I'm typically already in a terminal munging the thing anyway). I prefer to use the terminal to deal with these things because those tools can help me decompose the problem to a more reasonable space. That seems like a more useful way to spend my time than complaining that a massive file of text won't open on my editor for $REASONS, when it's, IMO, most likely that I wouldn't be able to make sense of the damned thing if I had it all opened in front of me anyway.

narag 4y ago
I believe the author of the article is criticizing Emacs for being a jack-of-all-trades that use neither the best approach for plain text (keep it simple, Syd) nor the best approach for code that I swear it's structured editing, after some time working in a system very similar to what some-mthfka describes in a sibling comment.
- scruple 4y ago
  It's not Emacs fault that CSV is a garbage format. Anyone who has spent time dealing with CSV understands the hell that is lurking in it's shadows. I don't think the rants solution, though I did not finish reading it because I frankly got bored, is going to fix any of this, either.
  - lanstin 4y ago
    That isnt the problem he is describing tho, it is that you have no primitives in emacs that correspond to a rectangle of text entry boxes like the semantics of csv. You only have sequence of chars. The author wants people to rewrite emacs as a design system for arbitrary structures of data, with hooks for moving around the structure and editing the structure and i guess contents
    - scruple 4y ago
      I see. I thought the rant was a mess, personally, so I stopped reading it. Theres some irony to be found in an unstructed rant about... structured editing. Anyway, if that's the point, then maybe tree-sitter can help us get there in the future? I still fail to see how this is an Emacs problem to solve. The vim/neovim model is also using what are essentially string dumps in the form of buffers. I'm sure every other editor is, too, but without going as far as actually having buffers, though I'm not invested enough into anything else to know what it's doing.

narag 4y ago

I believe the author of the article is criticizing Emacs for being a jack-of-all-trades that use neither the best approach for plain text (keep it simple, Syd) nor the best approach for code that I swear it's structured editing, after some time working in a system very similar to what some-mthfka describes in a sibling comment.

scruple 4y ago
It's not Emacs fault that CSV is a garbage format. Anyone who has spent time dealing with CSV understands the hell that is lurking in it's shadows. I don't think the rants solution, though I did not finish reading it because I frankly got bored, is going to fix any of this, either.
- lanstin 4y ago
  That isnt the problem he is describing tho, it is that you have no primitives in emacs that correspond to a rectangle of text entry boxes like the semantics of csv. You only have sequence of chars. The author wants people to rewrite emacs as a design system for arbitrary structures of data, with hooks for moving around the structure and editing the structure and i guess contents
  - scruple 4y ago
    I see. I thought the rant was a mess, personally, so I stopped reading it. Theres some irony to be found in an unstructed rant about... structured editing. Anyway, if that's the point, then maybe tree-sitter can help us get there in the future? I still fail to see how this is an Emacs problem to solve. The vim/neovim model is also using what are essentially string dumps in the form of buffers. I'm sure every other editor is, too, but without going as far as actually having buffers, though I'm not invested enough into anything else to know what it's doing.