EMacs?

[rutski89]

Does anyone here use EMacs? I'd like to know what it is like before emerging.

[darkwing]

Escape Meta Alt Control Shit (EMACS) is like an operating system inside a text editor. Stay sane and avoid RSI, carpal tunnel syndrome and herpes by using vim.

[apmurray]

emacs is good. If you want it with nice gtk2 menus etc
emerge emacs-cvs

there is a lot of discussion of emacs (and vim) around these forums so searching for previous comments about emacs will probably be useful also, as this may degrade into the usual emacs vs vim battles

in general the learning curve of vim is greater, but a heap of people swear by it (not me though), so emerge both and see what you think for yourself.

[teknomage1]

Use emacs if you want to do lisp, or xml, else vim is quicker.

[TrueDFX]

emacs has emulation modes (vi* emulation modes too -- with the default bindings, try M-x viper-mode, for example), and you can easily (well, not as easily as in some other text editors) redefine the key bindings any way you like, so the Ctrl-Meta-Shift stuff really isn't a reason against it. The big differences I see are:

emacs is powerful. vim is fast.

With emacs, you can configure it so that what you see on the screen is different from what's actually stored in files you edit, if you want. vim has visible whitespace (display tabs as >---, display a $ at the end of a line, etc.) and syntax folding (hide the blocks of functions), but this isn't extensible. With emacs, you can create things like this yourself, any way you want, rather than being limited by what the programmers had in mind. Also, in graphical modes, it's possible for such things to show up in completely different fonts. (And you can create pretty much anything in emacs... there's even a browser. But that I don't see as much as an advantage.)

vim, on the other hand, loads up nearly instantaneously, and simply has the features most users will be more than satisfied with. If you don't need more than that, go for vim.

Personally, I use both; different tools for different purposes.

[teknomage1]

Holy crap! I thought I was the only one who used both.

[DoktorSeven]

*sniff sniff* I smell an editor war.

Emacs is good in its own quirky way. I prefer the style of vim myself, but that's just me. The answer is: learn and try both, then use vim because it's superior.

[theBlackDragon]

*sniff sniff* I smell an editor war.

Emacs is good in its own quirky way. I prefer the style of vim myself, but that's just me. The answer is: learn and try both, then use vim because it's superior.

*sigh* nuanced statements are just not for most people (this isn't aimed specifically at you though).

I see it very simple: emacs is an ide, vi is an editor and, yes, I use both.

[Taladar]

If you have to choose between one IDE for each language and emacs as IDE for all, choose the latter. You will be more efficient and don't have to relearn it for each new language (not to mention working with often shitty IDEs barely out of alpha). However as others mentioned if you need a simple editor for 1-2 page long config-files mostly you might consider something more lightweight.

I personally use emacs for everything regarding editing and a few things beyond (gnus for mail and bbdb as address db).

If you want to get a good overview you might want to have a look at http://www.emacswiki.org

[longship]

Does anyone here use EMacs? I'd like to know what it is like before emerging.

Boy, are you going to start some flame wars here.

Here's the poop on Emacs vs VI.

VI -- If you can stomach it's dual-mode behavior, VI is fast, small and gets things done. Many VI afficianados are nearly religious about their loyalty. It's a good editor, but I do not recommend that you start typing in it until you look to see if you are in command mode or insert mode. The only reason why I do *not* use VI is this split personality. I've clobbered more than one file by typing text while in command mode. That is behavior which I cannot tolerate. Still, many swear allegiance to VI. It's just not my bag. I can use it, but only do so when nothing else is available.

Emacs -- Huge and does *everything*. However, it is a great programmer's editor. More importantly, it doesn't have the dual mode behavior of VI, which to my thinking makes VI a crippled tool. You do not have to learn everything about Emacs to be able to use it effectively.

Both VI and Emacs have huge command lists. VI's are invoked while in command mode (some are available also in insert mode, also). Emacs controls are all invoked by Ctrl- and Meta- key combinations. The default Meta- key is the Esc. Both have fairly steep learning curves. Once you decide which one you're going to learn, you should get a user's manual. For VI that's as simple as printing the Man pages ("man -t vi | lpr"). For Emacs, Gnu sells a very nice manual which helps support free software.

You might want to look into a Happy Hacking Keyboard . It has the Ctrl- and Esc keys where god herself meant them to be. These are great keyboards, small and fairly rugged. Yes, they are expensive, but the Lite versions are more affordable. The US distributor, PFU, sometimes has refurbs available for less money. Are they worth the money? Only you can decide that. If you do a lot of typing in Emacs or VI, they may be worth it. I do, so I have three of these keyboards.

There are other editors available which may suit your purposes, for instance, Nano, the editor which comes with Gentoo, is small and easy to use.

[theBlackDragon]

Does anyone here use EMacs? I'd like to know what it is like before emerging.

Boy, are you going to start some flame wars here.

Here's the poop on Emacs vs VI.

VI -- If you can stomach it's dual-mode behavior, VI is fast, small and gets things done. Many VI afficianados are nearly religious about their loyalty. It's a good editor, but I do not recommend that you start typing in it until you look to see if you are in command mode or insert mode. The only reason why I do *not* use VI is this split personality. I've clobbered more than one file by typing text while in command mode. That is behavior which I cannot tolerate. Still, many swear allegiance to VI. It's just not my bag. I can use it, but only do so when nothing else is available.

Emacs -- Huge and does *everything*. However, it is a great programmer's editor. More importantly, it doesn't have the dual mode behavior of VI, which to my thinking makes VI a crippled tool. You do not have to learn everything about Emacs to be able to use it effectively.

Both VI and Emacs have huge command lists. VI's are invoked while in command mode (some are available also in insert mode, also). Emacs controls are all invoked by Ctrl- and Meta- key combinations. The default Meta- key is the Esc. Both have fairly steep learning curves. Once you decide which one you're going to learn, you should get a user's manual. For VI that's as simple as printing the Man pages ("man -t vi | lpr"). For Emacs, Gnu sells a very nice manual which helps support free software.

You might want to look into a Happy Hacking Keyboard . It has the Ctrl- and Esc keys where god herself meant them to be. These are great keyboards, small and fairly rugged. Yes, they are expensive, but the Lite versions are more affordable. The US distributor, PFU, sometimes has refurbs available for less money. Are they worth the money? Only you can decide that. If you do a lot of typing in Emacs or VI, they may be worth it. I do, so I have three of these keyboards.

There are other editors available which may suit your purposes, for instance, Nano, the editor which comes with Gentoo, is small and easy to use.

That's one of the best and most neutral explanations I've heard to date. Just one thing, meta is mapped to Alt and Escape on most keyboards, not only to escape (I'd die if I always had to use escape), but for some combinations (think Meta-Tab), the Escape key is a tad more practical as most OSs/WMs have stuff bound to Alt-Tab...

[d11wtq]

Does anyone here use EMacs? I'd like to know what it is like before emerging.

Holy war topic Be warned.

I use emacs... I use it because I'm a programmer and it does syntax highlighting using elisp addons.... add to that it works without X over SSH and I'm in heaven working from home

IMHO it pretty easy to learn... at least compared to it's competing editor which i'm not naming to avoid the flames

[teknomage1]

Boy, are you going to start some flame wars here.

The topic lasted a year without starting one. The Gentoo community's just that cool.

[longship]

Boy, are you going to start some flame wars here.

The topic lasted a year without starting one. The Gentoo community's just that cool.

I agree. That's why I'm switching everything to Gentoo.

Best Docs of any distribution.
Best, most informative forums of any distribution.
Seemingly, the most active and knowledgeable community of any distribution.

I've been a Linux user for over a decade. I've tried many distributions (started with Slackware). I switched to Debian because of its incredible community support, and somewhat cutting edge character. However, Debian is too damned slow getting things into their repositories. Even "Testing" has old stuff.

When I build a new machine, it's going to have new stuff in it. I want my distribution to support that new stuff. Plus, I want things to work. I want to be able to use my computer, not have to fuss with it all the time. It's true that Gentoo is a bit fussy, however, once one has things rolling along, I've seen no other distribution that has as as full support for new hardware.

Bringing up Gentoo on a VIA EPIA MII12000 Mini-ITX motherboard was a cinch. Everything just worked the first time, including the special drivers for video and sound on that Mobo available in Portage. With Debian I'd likely have had to patch XFree and the kerne or use CVS versionsl. When I recently decided to build a dual core AMD64 box, my sole consideration was Gentoo.

Can Gentoo be a pain in the ass, too? You bet. Compiling everything takes time. However, once the damned thing is running, it's running very well. And if there's problems, you still have the Gentoo community to fall back on.

After a decade of Linux use, my computers are running fairly cutting edge stuff *and* at the same time are stable. Plus, anytime I want to update, I only have to update portage and run "emerge -uD world". I don't have to do that very often.

Thanks Gentoo team.