I've been using emacs since as far back as 18.59. Still use it daily.
However, I often wonder where Emacs is heading. Most places I work, I'm in the minority - and that's an understatement - as an Emacs user.
I learned Lisp because of Emacs and it's a cool language, but almost no one cares to learn Lisp.
I can't live without Emacs, but in some areas Emacs tend to be lacking.
As I just noticed that Emacs 24 is now stable it still amazes me that there's still a lot of development going on, considering my sense of isolation as an Emacs user, and the impression that Emacs users is a dying breed.
Since this is a help group, am I required to end with a question mark? :-)
S Boucher <st...@yahoo.com> writes:
> I've been using emacs since as far back as 18.59. Still use it daily.
> However, I often wonder where Emacs is heading. Most places I work,
> I'm in the minority - and that's an understatement - as an Emacs user.
> I learned Lisp because of Emacs and it's a cool language, but almost
> no one cares to learn Lisp.
> I can't live without Emacs, but in some areas Emacs tend to be
> lacking.
> As I just noticed that Emacs 24 is now stable it still amazes me that
> there's still a lot of development going on, considering my sense of
> isolation as an Emacs user, and the impression that Emacs users is a
> dying breed.
> Since this is a help group, am I required to end with a question mark?
> :-)
All the people who matter do use emacs.
It's not so much that there are not a lot of emacs users, as that there
are a lot of computer users in general. When you increase the number
of computer users up to the population of the planet, you cannot expect
emacs users to increase proportionnaly. So yes, in a random
group of people, it's almost certain you will be the only emacs user.
But in absolute number there are a lot of emacs users, and enough to
feed its continuing develpment.
S Boucher <st...@yahoo.com> writes:
> I've been using emacs since as far back as 18.59. Still use it daily.
> However, I often wonder where Emacs is heading. Most places I work, I'm in the
> minority - and that's an understatement - as an Emacs user.
> I learned Lisp because of Emacs and it's a cool language, but almost no one
> cares to learn Lisp.
> I can't live without Emacs, but in some areas Emacs tend to be lacking.
> As I just noticed that Emacs 24 is now stable it still amazes me that there's
> still a lot of development going on, considering my sense of isolation as an
> Emacs user, and the impression that Emacs users is a dying breed.
> Since this is a help group, am I required to end with a question mark? :-)
> Regards,
I have never worked anywhere where anyone else used Emacs. I've also
never worked anywhere where people were not pretty impressed with the
level of efficiency I had while editing, particularly for things like JS
frameworks that don't have widespread editor support.
There are definitely things that could use improvement in Emacs, but so
far, for the type of stuff I do, it's *by far* the most versatile tool
in my toolbox.
Jeremiah Dodds <jeremiah.do...@gmail.com> writes:
> S Boucher <st...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> I've been using emacs since as far back as 18.59. Still use it daily.
>> However, I often wonder where Emacs is heading. Most places I work, I'm in the
>> minority - and that's an understatement - as an Emacs user.
>> I learned Lisp because of Emacs and it's a cool language, but almost no one
>> cares to learn Lisp.
>> I can't live without Emacs, but in some areas Emacs tend to be lacking.
>> As I just noticed that Emacs 24 is now stable it still amazes me that there's
>> still a lot of development going on, considering my sense of isolation as an
>> Emacs user, and the impression that Emacs users is a dying breed.
>> Since this is a help group, am I required to end with a question mark? :-)
>> Regards,
> I have never worked anywhere where anyone else used Emacs. I've also
> never worked anywhere where people were not pretty impressed with the
> level of efficiency I had while editing, particularly for things like JS
> frameworks that don't have widespread editor support.
Emacs often spreads quietly.
Lots of people I've worked with have seen the light.
> I've been using emacs since as far back as 18.59. Still use it daily.
> However, I often wonder where Emacs is heading. Most places I work, I'm in the minority - and that's an understatement - as an Emacs user.
> I learned Lisp because of Emacs and it's a cool language, but almost no one cares to learn Lisp.
> I can't live without Emacs, but in some areas Emacs tend to be lacking.
> As I just noticed that Emacs 24 is now stable it still amazes me that there's still a lot of development going on, considering my sense of isolation as an Emacs user, and the impression that Emacs users is a dying breed.
> Since this is a help group, am I required to end with a question mark? :-)
> Regards,
Hi,
at my job there are about 4 Emacs (and roughly 6 vi) users (out of 12).
Also, while being at the university, I was recommended Emacs in several
courses. Considering the sheer amount of text editors that actually
exist, I'd say, that the frequency at which you encounter emacs, is a
good sign for its popularity and large user-base.
Using emacs for more than 30 years. The emacs users I know are among the most imaginative and competent people I know. Like many who read this list, they *use* the things that distinguish emacs from other editors: extensibility, macros, network access, subshells, process control, and the many available environments (by which I mean to include mail, Usenet, IDEs, etc.).
I'm deeply appreciative of the people who continue to work on emacs. I couldn't live without it, and if development ever comes to a halt, I'll probably just keep using the last version forever.
djc <ne...@resiak.org> writes:
> Using emacs for more than 30 years. The emacs users I know are among
> the most imaginative and competent people I know. Like many who read
> this list, they *use* the things that distinguish emacs from other
> editors: extensibility, macros, network access, subshells, process
> control, and the many available environments (by which I mean to
> include mail, Usenet, IDEs, etc.).
> I'm deeply appreciative of the people who continue to work on emacs.
> I couldn't live without it, and if development ever comes to a halt,
> I'll probably just keep using the last version forever.
Oh, I think the base is increasing slowly, numerically. I'm a non-technical user, non-programmer, and I started using it because of org-mode. I use it for research, for my daily planner, that sort of thing. Once I started using it, I couldn't stop. It doesn't take very many keystrokes to make one realize how special it is.
-----Original Message-----
>From: djc <ne...@resiak.org>
>Sent: Jun 18, 2012 5:32 AM
>To: help-gnu-em...@gnu.org
>Subject: Re: Emacs users a dying breed?
>Using emacs for more than 30 years. The emacs users I know are among the >most imaginative and competent people I know. Like many who read this >list, they *use* the things that distinguish emacs from other editors: >extensibility, macros, network access, subshells, process control, and the >many available environments (by which I mean to include mail, Usenet, IDEs, >etc.).
>I'm deeply appreciative of the people who continue to work on emacs. I >couldn't live without it, and if development ever comes to a halt, I'll >probably just keep using the last version forever.
On 2012-06-18, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Emacs often spreads quietly.
> Lots of people I've worked with have seen the light.
Then there are users like myself. Real lazy ppl who find it
unacceptably annoying to have to add an extra keystroke each time they
move from one mode to the other, like all things vi. I probably
learned vi first, but kept wondering WTF! is it with this constantly
changing modes nightmare. This is insane! So, because of slrn, I
discovered jed. Later I discovered bash and many other linux
utilities use emacs keystrokes. Finally, I took the plunge and got
THE BOOK. The rest is history, as they say. I don't particularly
like a lot of things about emacs, I suck as a progrmmer so don't do
LISP, I don't use gnus, and am not a developer, and jed has better txt
highlighting already enabled. Even as I struggle to learn C, I still
don't understand how to compile a simple C program from inside emacs.
Regardless, it's the coolest bestest file mgr and txt editor I know
and I will always use it on the command line and would rather use M$
Windows notepad than vi.
> () S Boucher<st...@yahoo.com>
> () Sun, 17 Jun 2012 19:32:26 -0700 (PDT)
> impression that Emacs users is a dying breed.
> everybody dies, even those who dance in fingered trees.
> so much pollen unhoarded, unhonied, awaiting next breeze!
if Emacs is the front-door, who might be interested in it's backyard, who cares?
if Emacs is the back-door, who might sit inside, awaiting it's servants?
<susancra...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Oh, I think the base is increasing slowly, numerically. I'm a non-technical user, non-programmer, and I started using it because of org-mode. I use it for research, for my daily planner, that sort of thing.
I hear this quite often. As a fervent org-mode user myself, it makes me
happy. :)
I am a physics researcher and I use it for almost everything (except for
web browsing, emails and shell).
> I've been using emacs since as far back as 18.59. Still use it daily.
> However, I often wonder where Emacs is heading. Most places I work,
> I'm in the minority - and that's an understatement - as an Emacs user.
and it still is, after a decade of using it in my office space.
[snipped 5 lines]
> As I just noticed that Emacs 24 is now stable it still amazes me that
> there's still a lot of development going on, considering my sense of
> isolation as an Emacs user, and the impression that Emacs users is a
> dying breed.
With the features it already has, I wouldn't even mind if development
stopped, it still beats other editors hands down. If anything, I've
pretty much stopped checking out every new editor that comes out every
few years; they seem to implement something that is obvious or trivial
to summon up in Emacs(not that the actual development of said feature
was trivial in Emacs).
> I'm deeply appreciative of the people who continue to work on emacs.
> I couldn't live without it, and if development ever comes to a halt,
> I'll probably just keep using the last version forever.
I agree. It's been stable for as long as I can remember.
For me, the big change came at 19 (X windows support and colors). I think that was when the Windows version came along as well. Everything after that was polish, since I don't use international character sets or images.
notbob <not...@nothome.com> writes:
> On 2012-06-18, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> Emacs often spreads quietly.
>> Lots of people I've worked with have seen the light.
> Then there are users like myself. Real lazy ppl who find it
> unacceptably annoying to have to add an extra keystroke each time they
> move from one mode to the other, like all things vi. I probably
> learned vi first, but kept wondering WTF! is it with this constantly
> changing modes nightmare. This is insane! So, because of slrn, I
> discovered jed. Later I discovered bash and many other linux
> utilities use emacs keystrokes. Finally, I took the plunge and got
> THE BOOK. The rest is history, as they say. I don't particularly
> like a lot of things about emacs, I suck as a progrmmer so don't do
> LISP, I don't use gnus, and am not a developer, and jed has better txt
> highlighting already enabled. Even as I struggle to learn C, I still
> don't understand how to compile a simple C program from inside emacs.
Assuming you have the current buffer pgm.c,
you just type M-x compile RET pgm RET
M-x compile RET will present you a minibuffer with "make -k " in it.
Typing pgm RET will make it run: make -k pgm
Since you probably don't have a Makefile in the same directory as pgm.c,
the default rules will be used, so pgm will be built from pgm.c using
the C compiler.
If your program doesn't take any stdin input, you can even run it at the
same time: M-x compile RET pgm && ./pgm RET
> Regardless, it's the coolest bestest file mgr and txt editor I know
> and I will always use it on the command line and would rather use M$
> Windows notepad than vi.
suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+li...@gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Susan Cragin
> <susancra...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Oh, I think the base is increasing slowly, numerically. I'm a non-technical user, non-programmer, and I started using it because of org-mode. I use it for research, for my daily planner, that sort of thing.
> I hear this quite often. As a fervent org-mode user myself, it makes me
> happy. :)
> I am a physics researcher and I use it for almost everything (except for
> web browsing, emails and shell).
Give it a try!
M-x w3m-browse-url RET http://google.com RET
M-x mail RET to send one
M-x rmail RET to read your mail (some configuration needed)
M-x shell RET or M-x term RET
On 2012-06-18, Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote:
> Since you probably don't have a Makefile in the same directory as pgm.c,
> the default rules will be used, so pgm will be built from pgm.c using
> the C compiler.
Thanks, Pascal. Since I use Slackware, which has jes about everything
needed for compiling from source, I'll give it a try. Both make and gcc are in
the same /usr/bin/ dir.
On Mon, Jun 18 2012 20:53 (@1340045620), Ugly Sean wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jida...@jidanni.org
> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 14:14
> To: help-gnu-em...@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs users a dying breed?
>>Too late in the game to have me learn a different editor.
> If you are capable of learning then it's not too late.
> However, if Emacs is the editor you know, why bother changing?
You can't really know until you've tried, right? I sometimes wonder what
it's like on the other side… for two reasons:
1) Text editing actually seems quite efficient in the land of 666;
vimgolf [1] might or might not be representative, but the challenges and
results [2] are quite interesting. As Mickey Petersen puts it [3]:
> It’s obvious to most of us that to attempt a “fewest possible
> keystrokes” exercise in Emacs will invariably end in tears, as we
> can’t compete against vim in that regard; but with that said, we do
> have a lot of tricks up our sleeve.
And, more importantly,
2) Unix philosophy, in Doug McIlroy's words [4]:
> This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do
> it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle
> text streams, because that is a universal interface.
Eric Steven Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming" discusses
editors [5] and the "Emacs question" in particular [6]:
> Emacs could be considered a virtual machine or framework around a
> collection of small, sharp tools (the modes) that happen to be written
> in Lisp.
Emacs does not contradict the philosophy /per se/, but sometimes I wish
Emacs was more of a low level utility. As it stands, Emacs does many
small tasks very well. One aspect that makes the workflow particularly
pleasant is that all these tools work together so well. Take the
kill-ring for example: It is by far the most powerful clipboard facility
I've used. But I'd like to be able to use it in all my applications, not
only those written in elisp. Emacs' entirely customizable key system is
another example of a tool that I'd like to have everywhere on my
desktop.
As it currently stands, all of the (elisp) programs that want to
leverage the power of Emacs' "global facilities" have to run in the same
main process. But there is a price to pay for mixing the core features
with the high-level programs:
- concurrency/locking
the classic example being programs that do networking and block the
whole session
- shared state ("everything is global")
- usability: huge buffer lists result in requiring window-manager
like capabilities
- configuration: a common look of the GUI
- stability: one misbehaving program can blow up the whole session
- task parallelism: most programs are intended to have only one
running instance per session (ex.: a gnus for work, one for private
mail; debugging with several instances of gud simultaneously)
- security: I want my email client to know my IMAP password, but not
my IRC client
- auxiliary tasks
tasks that are already solved on the desktop are duplicated, such as
window and workspace management
One could say that Emacs doesn't do enough and solve these problems
"inside Emacs" by implementing concurrency, integrating firefox and
essentially becoming the desktop environment.
Or one could say that Emacs already does too much. The core features
could be factored out into a "text editing daemon". Elisp programs could
then connect to this daemon and share as much of their state with the
daemon as makes sense to them. Basically take the current
emacs-server/emacsclient situation a step further and transform the
client from a very thin client into a runtime.
I'm curious to see what emacs.devel is planning for Emacs25, now that 24
is finally released I think we can expect to see some action on
implementing new features. The two approaches are rather complementary
than exclusive; let's hope that both get some love.
Philipp Haselwarter <phil...@haselwarter.org> writes:
> Emacs does not contradict the philosophy /per se/, but sometimes I wish
> Emacs was more of a low level utility. As it stands, Emacs does many
> small tasks very well. One aspect that makes the workflow particularly
> pleasant is that all these tools work together so well. Take the
> kill-ring for example: It is by far the most powerful clipboard facility
> I've used. But I'd like to be able to use it in all my applications, not
> only those written in elisp. Emacs' entirely customizable key system is
> another example of a tool that I'd like to have everywhere on my
> desktop.
> As it currently stands, all of the (elisp) programs that want to
> leverage the power of Emacs' "global facilities" have to run in the same
> main process. But there is a price to pay for mixing the core features
> with the high-level programs:
> - concurrency/locking
> the classic example being programs that do networking and block the
> whole session
> - shared state ("everything is global")
> - usability: huge buffer lists result in requiring window-manager
> like capabilities
> - configuration: a common look of the GUI
> - stability: one misbehaving program can blow up the whole session
> - task parallelism: most programs are intended to have only one
> running instance per session (ex.: a gnus for work, one for private
> mail; debugging with several instances of gud simultaneously)
> - security: I want my email client to know my IMAP password, but not
> my IRC client
> - auxiliary tasks
> tasks that are already solved on the desktop are duplicated, such as
> window and workspace management
Common Lisp offers more (potential) solutions to these problems.
See for example Climacs and McClim.
But more work is needed.
That said, nothing prevents you to run several instances of emacs. I
usually run three: programming, erc, gnus.
When you use StumpWM, you can define your own window manager key
bindings and have a CL REPL into your window manager available.
I could only encourage you to embed ECL into all the applications you
use.
On 2012-06-19, Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote:
> usually run three: programming, erc, gnus.
I probably would, but irssi is better than erc and slrn is better than
gnus. I will use them up on my ubuntu netbook, it having no real
developement base, but on my Slack box emacs is my primary editor,
even for slrn.
I try to learn something new about emacs every day, if only a
key-stroke. When I have the time, I read emacs lisp tutorial. It's
excellent and very well written. While I'm a rank amateur at emacs, I
can't live without it. It's the first thing I install on any *nix box.
