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It's hard to believe that you should not be able to open a file, edit and save it with GNU Emacs. I have a Mac, downloaded https://emacsformacosx.com https://em

by lispm 3y ago

It's hard to believe that you should not be able to open a file, edit and save it with GNU Emacs. I have a Mac, downloaded https://emacsformacosx.com https://emacsformacosx.com , started it, command-o opens a file dialog, typed characters, command-s saved the file. > For FOSS, the code is out there. It's a done thing, many decades ago. It just needs modernising. That one is an ancient code base dating back to the 60s, written in a Lisp dialect roughly ten people in the world can program with some competence (I can't, can you?). It's a nice project, but it is far far away from what GNU Emacs provides. GNU Emacs has many many thousand man years more work and polishing in it, ongoing. If you would learn a complex and large Lisp like Interlisp or Common Lisp, then one would better use a development environment for it. I doubt Medley is easier to use&learn than something like GNU Emacs + Slime + SBCL. For Common Lisp, Medley is the worse development environment, since very few code has developed for and with it. People use other tools to write Lisp code (vim, GNU Emacs, ...). People are just trying to get Medley to somewhat support the state of Common Lisp from 34 years ago (CLtL2). It has, like, zero support for Scheme or other programming languages (Python, Java, JavaScript, C++, Rust, ...). GNU Emacs is not my favorite Lisp IDE, but it's by far the most practical solution for average developers: it does not cost anything, it has good Lisp support for several Lisp dialects and all kinds of other programming languages, it runs good enough on almost all current operating systems, hopefully respects my data privacy, ... Sure one can use a new editor with less support for Lisp. I've also known Lisp developers using vi in a terminal. People have different preferences for their tools.

lproven 3y ago
> It's hard to believe that you should not be able to open a file, edit and save it with GNU Emacs. Believe it, baby. See my response immediately above. Or maybe immediately below, depending on HN. P.S. A macOS version is cheating. That I can use... but it's not the standard Emacs UI.
- _19qg 3y ago
  > A macOS version is cheating. That I can use... but it's not the standard Emacs UI. There is no such thing as a single standard UI. In addition to the terminal version, GNU Emacs was ported to window systems loooooooong time ago. It's perfectly normal to use them. I use the GTK version of GNU Emacs on Linux.
  - lproven 3y ago
    > There is no such thing as a single standard UI Yes, there is, and it is called CUA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access I learned about 20 different text editors before CUA came along. I refuse to learn any new ones unless they comply with CUA. I write English, not code. Any one of dozens of CUA editors are perfectly fine and adequate for my needs. > GNU Emacs was ported to window systems loooooooong time ago. So its programmers have had decades to adapt it so that it conforms to the standards set in the 1980s and adopted by the entire computer industry, from Apple to Xerox. If they can't be bothered to adapt it, I can't be bothered to learn their ugly pre-standardisation UI. Some examples: a document is held in a window which can be split into panes to see more than one at a time. Those are the terms. Use them, or GTFO. The keystrokes for file operations are always Ctrl + the first letter of the relevant English verb, e.g. Ctrl+O is Open, Ctrl+P is Print. The Control key is abbreviated Ctrl and nothing else. The key next to Ctrl is called Alternate, abbreviated Alt. It is not called anything else on PC systems, although Macs call it Option, abbreviated Opt. It is not called "Meta" and no hardware made in 40 years called it that. The software was ported to the hardware; now port its manual and its UI, or GTFO. Incidentally, a second danger of using the wrong name is that because it's wrong, different teams use it for different things. The KDE team call the Super key "Meta". https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/khelpcenter/fundamentals/kbd.html https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/khelpcenter/fundamentals/kbd... They are wrong, too. Ctrl, Alt, Win/Super. Deal with it. The world changes. Software must adapt.
    - lispm 3y ago
      Basically nothing of that applies to my main devices: Macs, iPads, iPhones. None of those use CUA (-> the Apple UI guidelines for those are either older (Mac) or newer), keystroke for file applications don't use control, there are no win/super keys, there are no multiple documents using window "panes" (as you can see in any of Apple's applications, for example Apple Terminal uses Tabs, not panes), ... See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts Ugly...
      - 3y ago

by lispm 3y ago

lproven 3y ago

> It's hard to believe that you should not be able to open a file, edit and save it with GNU Emacs. Believe it, baby. See my response immediately above. Or maybe immediately below, depending on HN. P.S. A macOS version is cheating. That I can use... but it's not the standard Emacs UI.

_19qg 3y ago
> A macOS version is cheating. That I can use... but it's not the standard Emacs UI. There is no such thing as a single standard UI. In addition to the terminal version, GNU Emacs was ported to window systems loooooooong time ago. It's perfectly normal to use them. I use the GTK version of GNU Emacs on Linux.
- lproven 3y ago
  > There is no such thing as a single standard UI Yes, there is, and it is called CUA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access I learned about 20 different text editors before CUA came along. I refuse to learn any new ones unless they comply with CUA. I write English, not code. Any one of dozens of CUA editors are perfectly fine and adequate for my needs. > GNU Emacs was ported to window systems loooooooong time ago. So its programmers have had decades to adapt it so that it conforms to the standards set in the 1980s and adopted by the entire computer industry, from Apple to Xerox. If they can't be bothered to adapt it, I can't be bothered to learn their ugly pre-standardisation UI. Some examples: a document is held in a window which can be split into panes to see more than one at a time. Those are the terms. Use them, or GTFO. The keystrokes for file operations are always Ctrl + the first letter of the relevant English verb, e.g. Ctrl+O is Open, Ctrl+P is Print. The Control key is abbreviated Ctrl and nothing else. The key next to Ctrl is called Alternate, abbreviated Alt. It is not called anything else on PC systems, although Macs call it Option, abbreviated Opt. It is not called "Meta" and no hardware made in 40 years called it that. The software was ported to the hardware; now port its manual and its UI, or GTFO. Incidentally, a second danger of using the wrong name is that because it's wrong, different teams use it for different things. The KDE team call the Super key "Meta". https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/khelpcenter/fundamentals/kbd.html https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/khelpcenter/fundamentals/kbd... They are wrong, too. Ctrl, Alt, Win/Super. Deal with it. The world changes. Software must adapt.
  - lispm 3y ago
    Basically nothing of that applies to my main devices: Macs, iPads, iPhones. None of those use CUA (-> the Apple UI guidelines for those are either older (Mac) or newer), keystroke for file applications don't use control, there are no win/super keys, there are no multiple documents using window "panes" (as you can see in any of Apple's applications, for example Apple Terminal uses Tabs, not panes), ... See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts Ugly...
    - 3y ago