Which is the best port of Gnu Emacs to Mac OSX?

RPS

unread,

Aug 9, 2010, 10:33:02 AM8/9/10

to

What is the best port of Gnu Emacs to Mac OSX? Ideally, I would like to
have a setup in which I can select between these choices-

(1) Old fashioned non GUI emacs in Terminal

(2) GUI version from an icon in the dock

Thanks.

AV3

unread,

Aug 9, 2010, 4:03:35 PM8/9/10

to

I haven't used it in years, but there was a GUI version called Carbon
XEmacs. I notice in a cursory Google search that a supposedly helpful
website is a year out of date.

--
++====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====++
||Arnold VICTOR, New York City, i. e., <arvi...@Wearthlink.net> ||
||Arnoldo VIKTORO, Nov-jorkurbo, t. e., <arvi...@Wearthlink.net> ||
||Remove capital letters from e-mail address for correct address/ ||
|| Forigu majusklajn literojn el e-poŝta adreso por ĝusta adreso ||
++====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====++

BreadW...@fractious.net

unread,

Aug 9, 2010, 4:48:01 PM8/9/10

to

AV3 <arvi...@earthlink.net> writes:

>> (1) Old fashioned non GUI emacs in Terminal

You already have that. It comes standard on every Mac. Have you tried
it? Is there something wrong with it?

>> (2) GUI version from an icon in the dock

> I haven't used it in years, but there was a GUI version called Carbon
> XEmacs. I notice in a cursory Google search that a supposedly helpful
> website is a year out of date.

I've got a GUI version that's a couple of years old (okay, about 3 or 4
years) and it work fine, but I don't do much with it beyond just edit
files sometimes. 9 times out of 10, I'll just open emacs in a terminal.

There are a variety of OS X GUI variations of emacs, some stripped down
to mainly just the editor, some with all the additional bells and
whistles. You might try starting here to see what you like:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS

--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.

Xah Lee

unread,

Aug 10, 2010, 4:22:13 PM8/10/10

to

i wrote about this i think answers your question.

• Which Emacs to Download for Windows and Mac?
http://xahlee.org/emacs/which_emacs.html

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Geico Caveman

unread,

Aug 11, 2010, 12:54:40 PM8/11/10

to

The two main ports are Carbon Emacs and Aquamacs. I have used the
latter. It worked fairly well, and added mac keystrokes to the existing
emacs set.

I have no experience with Carbon Emacs. Try and see.

Timo Geusch

unread,

Aug 14, 2010, 11:02:07 AM8/14/10

to

RPS <r...@null.void> writes:

> What is the best port of Gnu Emacs to Mac OSX? Ideally, I would like to
> have a setup in which I can select between these choices-
>
> (1) Old fashioned non GUI emacs in Terminal

That one already comes with Mac OSX

> (2) GUI version from an icon in the dock

I've used both Carbon Emacs (actually I'm typing this in Carbon Emacs)
and Aquamacs. Both work pretty well, Aquamacs is more Mac-like whereas
Carbon Emacs is more Emacsish (if that makes sense?).

Richard Kettlewell

unread,

Aug 14, 2010, 11:30:17 AM8/14/10

to

I found Aquamacs unlike either 'real' Emacs or Mac applications; in
particular I found that bits of text constantly got deleted by accident.
Emacs.app (built from the standard Emacs sources) trips me up much less.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Doug Anderson

unread,

Aug 14, 2010, 5:21:22 PM8/14/10

to

RPS <r...@null.void> writes:

I found carbon emacs as packaged here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/carbonemacspackage.html

to be enough like emacs under Unix and X11 so that I've been quite
happy with it.

國父

unread,

Aug 17, 2010, 1:44:11 PM8/17/10

to

(1)
install homebrew first (http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew), then
$ sudo brew install emacs

(2)
I prefer emacs nightlies. newer is better
http://emacsformacosx.com/builds