emacs for everything?

emacs for everything?

[Mike]

I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
of thing?

Mike

Re: emacs for everything?

[Henrik S. Hansen]

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
> of thing?

I think many people use Emacs for anything except a few things.
Probably the #1 thing most heavy Emacs users _don't_ use for is Web
browsing, since Firefox is so powerful (this is purely guessing from my
side).

I personally use Emacs for (almost) everything except shell interaction,
for that I use Bash.  I use Gnus, PlannerMode, emacs-w3m, and so on.
It's a way of life :)

Another thing I've wondered about is, do people use Emacs in (primarily)
X or console?

For me it's the console.

-- 
Henrik S. Hansen     http://freecode.dk/~hsh/
Computer science (software engineering) student
Free Software Foundation member #1702 (http://member.fsf.org)

Re: emacs for everything?

[V. L. Simpson]

>>>>> "Mike" == Mike  <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

    > I know there are threads about creating an os with forth,
    > lisp, perl, etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os,
    > but rather doing everything from within emacs: mail, news,
    > shells, browsing, etc. I know these things all work, but
    > what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort of thing?

As _a_ way of life?  You mean there's some other kind of life besides
the emacs way.  8-]

But to seriously answer the question, I already do everything in
emacs.  Except bathroom breaks and sleep.  And as soon as I
figure out how to pass myself as an argument to 'sleep-for' I'll
be half-way there.

-- 
V. L. Simpson
http://vls.freeshell.org/
http://www.nongnu.org/screenplay/

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 01:29:03 -0000 Mike wrote:

> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
> of thing?

That's not what you're doing?! Heretic! ;-)

-- David

Re: emacs for everything?

[Galen Boyer]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, mikee@mikee.ath.cx wrote:
> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp,
> perl, etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather
> doing everything from within emacs: mail, news, shells,
> browsing, etc. I know these things all work, but what about
> using emacs as a 'way of life' sort of thing?

Most people do.

-- 
Galen Boyer

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kin Cho]

> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
> of thing?

Browsing?  As in web-browsing?  I think it will be a long time
before a emacs-based browser would work as well as one of the
popular web browsers.

-kin

emacs for everything?

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

>>>>> "M" == Mike  <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

M> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
M> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
M> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
M> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
M> of thing?

Someone already does it :)

-- 
 /\            ___
/___/\__|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_____________________
  //--\ | | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamico e fancazzista 
\/

Re: emacs for everything?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
> of thing?

Have a look at:

http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html
http://informatimago.free.fr/i/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.

Re: emacs for everything?

[respower]

On 2004-11-15, Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
> of thing?

For me this is a Turing-machine kind of question:  I _could_ use emacs
for pretty much everything, but there are imo much better ways to do
almost everything other than text-editing.  Obviously the details would
be different for each person, but for me, mutt and Mail.app (in osx) are
better mail clients than vm, slrn is a better news client than gnus,
OmniWeb and Firefox are much better browswers than anything that runs
in emacs, rxvt and Terminal.app are better terminal emulators than
eterm etc etc. 

On a side-note, I've recently been trying to force myself to reconsider
emacs even as a text-editor:  after 20+ years of emacs I decided it was
time to learn vi(m).  In fact I'm using vim right now to compose this
post.  But the more I use it, and the better I get at using it, the more
obvious it becomes that my productivity will always be far higher with
emacs.  That's essentially the same reason I don't use emacs for other
kinds of tasks (mail etc) -- I'm far more productive with other tools.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

> what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort of thing?

emacs is its own organism, so i suppose infecting it w/ (sometimes
recombinant) keystrokes and extracting sustenance from it (all w/o
killing it, properly) is how we virii make it our way of life...

please don't alert emacs else we may be sneezed right out!

thi

Re: emacs for everything?

[Per Abrahamsen]

hsh@freecode.dk (Henrik S. Hansen) writes:

> Probably the #1 thing most heavy Emacs users _don't_ use for is Web
> browsing, since Firefox is so powerful (this is purely guessing from my
> side).

The Emacs web-browser has not been updated for years, and breaks on
e.g. xhtml.  So no, I doubt many people use that.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Henrik S. Hansen]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> The Emacs web-browser has not been updated for years, and breaks on
> e.g. xhtml.  So no, I doubt many people use that.

Agreed, but I guess emacs-w3m is the most widely used browser for Emacs
by now.  Of course, it's just an Emacs interface to w3m (a console
browser), but it works great.

-- 
Henrik S. Hansen     http://freecode.dk/~hsh/
Computer science (software engineering) student
Free Software Foundation member #1702 (http://member.fsf.org)

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Fineman]

Kin Cho <ignore-this-prefixkin@techie.com> writes:

> I think it will be a long time before a emacs-based browser would
> work as well as one of the popular web browsers.

I would be willing to put up with a fair amount of clunkiness in other
departments if I could have a browser in which every text window was
an Emacs window.  Replacing Pine & NN with Gnus was a new birth of
freedom for me.
-- 
---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||:  Under modern manners, peculiar feelings cling to error.  :||

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Corneli]

   > I think it will be a long time before a emacs-based browser would
   > work as well as one of the popular web browsers.
   
   I would be willing to put up with a fair amount of clunkiness in
   other departments if I could have a browser in which every text
   window was an Emacs window.  Replacing Pine & NN with Gnus was a
   new birth of freedom for me.

You can use Lynx and set the editor to emacs.  This is what I do,
and it works fine.  (Lynx isn't running under Emacs though, just
invoking it.)  I'm pretty sure there is also a plugin for Mozilla
that lets you edit text fields with the editor of your choice.
Presumably emacs-w3m also has the feature you're looking for (and it
does run under emacs), though I don't use it personally.

Re: emacs for everything?

[William Xuuu]

hsh@freecode.dk (Henrik S. Hansen) writes:

> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:
>
> Another thing I've wondered about is, do people use Emacs in (primarily)
> X or console?
>
> For me it's the console.

Me too, :-) The fontify, the fonts, are much much nicer under console than
X. And the black background, good for eyes. I do most things within Emacs
under console, except interactive bash, and some stuffs that have to be
done under X, like viewing pdf, manipulating pictures, web browsing with
pictures, etc.

-- 
William Xuuu

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

> I know there are threads about creating an os with forth, lisp, perl,
> etc., what about emacs? Not creating the os, but rather doing everything
> from within emacs: mail, news, shells, browsing, etc. I know these
> things all work, but what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort
> of thing?

Currently, my job is to do Java programming.  I use Emacs and JDEE
(and CEDET, which is required by JDEE) for this.

I use Gnus for mail and news reading.

I use CPerl mode for Perl programming, when I need to hack Perl.

I use AUCTeX for LaTeX document editing.

I use nxml mode for XML documents of all kinds.

I use eshell as a shell.  (I also use xterm with screen and zsh for
some tasks.)

I like to use emacs-w3m for web browsing, but not all pages look
acceptable with this, so I also use Firefox.  But I configured JDEE to
use emacs-w3m for showing the Javadoc help, and I like it.

I tried to use ERC with bitlbee for chatting (IM) but that didn't work
well enough for me.  I don't use IM a lot, so perhaps that's why Gaim
is better for me.  But I can tell that for people who use IM a lot,
the ERC/bitlbee combination is better.


In the beginning, I didn't do all these things, but these just crept
up with the years.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Fabian Braennstroem]

Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> writes:

>   What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs
>   occupying the _whole_ screen with an optimal font, without
>   distractions from window borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus,
>   task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars, crow-bars, and what ever else
>   glaziers clutter your screen up with.
>
> He might be but _I'm_ not -- check out the ratpoison window manager.
> (And if you like my posted emacs configuration, which gets rid of
> all the googahs you mentioned.)

Don't forget to mention 'wmi':

<URL: http://wmi.modprobe.de/>

You can hide all 'distrations from window borders, mice scroll-bars, menus,
task-bars,...' and by the way, 'fluxbox' can do that too.

Greetings!
-- 
Fabian Braennstroem
Duesseldorf/Berlin

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

William Xuuu <william_xuuu@163.com> wrote:
>hsh@freecode.dk (Henrik S. Hansen) writes:
>
>> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:
>>
>> Another thing I've wondered about is, do people use Emacs in (primarily)
>> X or console?
>>
>> For me it's the console.
>
>Me too, :-) The fontify, the fonts, are much much nicer under console than
>X. And the black background, good for eyes. I do most things within Emacs
>under console, except interactive bash, and some stuffs that have to be
>done under X, like viewing pdf, manipulating pictures, web browsing with
>pictures, etc.

I simply do not understand the sanity in what you have
described!  That is a straight jacket!

Except I'll grant that fonts in X are a problem.  I've spent
hours and hours finding fonts (for any given screen resolution)
that provide a nice, readable screen under both (x)emacs and in
an xterm.  But it is *definitely* worth it.

The "black background, good for eyes" comment is correct, but
misplaced.  Under X I use goldenrod2 as the foreground color
along with black for the background, and it is much like the old
"amber" monochrome monitors of years ago.  Which is to say, even
better than white on black, for the eyes!

But what you are missing by using a console is the extreme
versatility provided by a good window manager under X.  Your
message headers indicate that you are using Linux, which means
you have to switch between a console and X with a rather clunky
mechanism, and have extremely limited use of screen space when
in the console.  What I do, using fvwm2 as a window manager, is
set up a desktop manager with a 1x15 matrix of virtual desktops.
The desktop manager is on the left side of the screen, and is
sticky.  Hence I need about 1/8 inch of the left side to be
clear in order to use it with a mouse (and none of it needs to
be clear to use the keyboard to switch desktops).

At this moment I have 4 web (opera) browsers open in four
different desktops (all as different users).  I have at least a
dozen instances of an xterm running in various windows.  At a
glance I can see which desktop I am in, and with the click of a
mouse I can move to a different one, or I can use control-arrow
keys to scroll up or down through the list.  (If at any time I
want a window in any desktop moved to the same desktop as
another window, that is an almost instant operation requiring
about three clicks of the mouse to do.)

Consider the effort that you have to go through on a console if
you want to switch to a web browser.  I can select any of four
of them with a single mouse click.  And I could have them all
stacked up in the same desktop in short order too, which simply
cannot be done on a console.

Actually, the description above of where the desktop manager is
located isn't quite true anymore.  I do use that on a couple of
machines, but my main workstation has dual head video, with two
17 inch monitors.  Right now I am in the second down virtual
desktop, and have xemacs running gnus on the left monitor, using
up about 95% of the screen.  On the right monitor is the desktop
manager, along with xcalc, xload, xsysinfo, a large clock, xmms,
5 buttons for local programs, and an xterm that is logged into
my firewall.  Everything on the right monitor is sticky and stays
in place regardless of which of the 15 desktops I'm in at any given
time.

All of which is to say that fvwm2 under X is a *far* more
versatile window manager than emacs is!  Emacs *is* great
though, and if for some reason one is 1) logged in remotely or
2) using a simple terminal, (all of which was very commonly the
case back when the "emacs as a window manager" concept
originated) then it is *really* nice to have all the facilities
of emacs available.

But using it on a typical system console, with X available, is
wearing a straight jacket.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Mathias Dahl]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:

> I tried to use ERC with bitlbee for chatting (IM) but that didn't
> work well enough for me.  I don't use IM a lot, so perhaps that's
> why Gaim is better for me.  But I can tell that for people who use
> IM a lot, the ERC/bitlbee combination is better.

Try out emacs-jabber. It works great, IMHO.

/Mathias

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Floyd L. Davidson <floyd@barrow.com> wrote on Tue, 16 Nov 2004 04:20:48 -0900:
> William Xuuu <william_xuuu@163.com> wrote:
>>hsh@freecode.dk (Henrik S. Hansen) writes:

>>> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

>>> Another thing I've wondered about is, do people use Emacs in (primarily)
>>> X or console?

>>> For me it's the console.

>>Me too, :-) The fontify, the fonts, are much much nicer under console
>>than X. And the black background, good for eyes. I do most things
>>within Emacs under console, except interactive bash, and some stuffs
>>that have to be done under X, like viewing pdf, manipulating pictures,
>>web browsing with pictures, etc.

> I simply do not understand the sanity in what you have described!  That
> is a straight jacket!

To you, perhaps.

> Except I'll grant that fonts in X are a problem.  I've spent
> hours and hours finding fonts (for any given screen resolution)
> that provide a nice, readable screen under both (x)emacs and in
> an xterm.

I spent no time whatsoever getting a nice readable font on my console.

> But it is *definitely* worth it.

Not to me, it isn't.

> The "black background, good for eyes" comment is correct, but
> misplaced.  Under X I use goldenrod2 ....

Stop showing off!  ;-)

> .... as the foreground color along with black for the background, and
> it is much like the old "amber" monochrome monitors of years ago.
> Which is to say, even better than white on black, for the eyes!

I use white on black.  If I didn't like that, I'd use (bright) yellow on
black.  Try M-: (list-colors-display) sometime, and tell me how long it
takes, on X, to locate a suitable colour?  On the console, all the
colours are there on the screen at the same time, and the right one is
obvious.

> But what you are missing by using a console is the extreme versatility
> provided by a good window manager under X.

What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs occupying the
_whole_ screen with an optimal font, without distractions from window
borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus, task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars,
crow-bars, and what ever else glaziers clutter your screen up with.

> Your message headers indicate that you are using Linux, which means you
> have to switch between a console and X with a rather clunky mechanism,
> and have extremely limited use of screen space when in the console.

Extremely limited?  How so?

> What I do, using fvwm2 as a window manager, is set up a desktop manager
> with a 1x15 matrix of virtual desktops.  The desktop manager is on the
> left side of the screen, and is sticky.

Do you wear gloves to protect your fingers?

> Hence I need about 1/8 inch of the left side to be clear in order to
> use it with a mouse (and none of it needs to be clear to use the
> keyboard to switch desktops).

WHAT???? An 1/8 inch of distracting garbage in the place where your eyes
are most likely to be focussing.  UUURRRKKKK!!!!!  I switch between
frames by pressing the keys intended for the purpose, <F1>, <F2>, ....

> At this moment I have 4 web (opera) browsers open in four different
> desktops (all as different users).  I have at least a dozen instances
> of an xterm running in various windows.  At a glance I can see which
> desktop I am in, ......

I don't need to worry about which "desktop" I'm in.  I'm in Emacs.  Full
stop.  Other applications can be reached by <alt><F1>, etc.  I have a
near infinite number of Linux virtual terminals to house those
applications.

> .... and with the click of a mouse I can move to a different one, or I
> can use control-arrow keys to scroll up or down through the list.

You mean, you don't have the control arrow key bindings available in
Emacs?  Yikes, what a broken setup!

> (If at any time I want a window in any desktop moved to the same
> desktop as another window, that is an almost instant operation
> requiring about three clicks of the mouse to do.)

An "instant operation" requiring "about" three clicks of the mouse?
That's a contradiction in terms.  As a console user, I _never_ want my
desktop moved.  It stays where it is, underneath my monitor.

> Consider the effort that you have to go through on a console if
> you want to switch to a web browser.

Yes, <alt>-<F7>.  What a tragically clumsy way to get there.  ;-)

> I can select any of four of them with a single mouse click.

I doubt that very much.  If you have three buttons on your mouse, there
is a choice of, at most, three things you can select "with a single mouse
click".

But what if you only want to look at a single browser at a time?  ;-)

> And I could have them all stacked up in the same desktop in short order
> too, which simply cannot be done on a console.

Yes, thankfully, and that is one very significant advantage of the
console.

> Actually, the description above of where the desktop manager is located
> isn't quite true anymore.  I do use that on a couple of machines, but
> my main workstation has dual head video, with two 17 inch monitors.
> Right now I am in the second down virtual desktop, ....

Consoles don't go down, their technology being mature and stable.

> .... and have xemacs running gnus on the left monitor, using up about
> 95% of the screen.

My Emacs does even better - it uses 100% of the screen.

> On the right monitor is the desktop manager, along with xcalc, xload,
> xsysinfo, a large clock, xmms, 5 buttons for local programs, and an
> xterm that is logged into my firewall.

I've got Emacs on my screen, and _NOTHING_ else.

> Everything on the right monitor is sticky and stays in place regardless
> of which of the 15 desktops I'm in at any given time.

I keep my monitor and keyboard clean, and I can use then without gloves
and without having to wash my hands afterwards.

> All of which is to say that fvwm2 under X is a *far* more versatile
> window manager than emacs is!

Tell me, how much of your time do you spend managing windows, and how
much using Emacs?  None of my time is taken up by managing windows.

> Emacs *is* great though, and if for some reason one is 1) logged in
> remotely or 2) using a simple terminal, (all of which was very commonly
> the case back when the "emacs as a window manager" concept originated)
> then it is *really* nice to have all the facilities of emacs available.

> But using it on a typical system console, with X available, is
> wearing a straight jacket.

All joking aside, you're making the mistake of assuming that everybody
works like you do, and therefore your setup is universally optimal.  This
isn't the case.

It seems that you are an extreme "optical" worker, doing most of your
work with your eyes.  You _need_ everything on your sticky screens at the
same time.  If something isn't currently displayed, you kind of forget
it's there - a bit like a baby up till the age of (?) 6 months.  At a
guess, your manual dexterity probably isn't that well developed, which is
why you find the mouse so attractive.  The mouse has got to be about the
most clunky inefficient device ever invented, at least for anybody with a
modicum of dexterity.

I'm an extreme "manual" worker, doing nearly _all_ my work with my
fingers and brain.  (In my spare time, I play a musical instrument.)  I
can only usefully see one thing at a time on a computer screen, yet I
retain in my brain a copy of where everything is - When using the input
area, for example, I rarely even notice that it's at the bottom of the
screen - my fingers type, my brain retainng an image of what I have just
typed, and my eyes stay focussed on the text I'm working with.
_Anything_ else on the screen is a distraction to me, even things like
scroll-bars.  And dialogue boxes exploding into my face are sheer
purgatory.  For me, Emacs on a console, with shift/control/alt arrow key
combinations bound to movement and scrolling commands is optimal.

Your mileage varies.  So does mine.

> Floyd L. Davidson

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Corneli]

  What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs
  occupying the _whole_ screen with an optimal font, without
  distractions from window borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus,
  task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars, crow-bars, and what ever else
  glaziers clutter your screen up with.

He might be but _I'm_ not -- check out the ratpoison window manager.
(And if you like my posted emacs configuration, which gets rid of
all the googahs you mentioned.)

As for why I prefer to use X, it is because there are more modifiers
available in an emacs running under X than in an emacs running in
the terminal.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Oliver Scholz]

FWIW, if the choice between X and Linux tty is just one of fonts and
colours: It is quite possible and easy to make X look exactly like a
linux console -- at least on a first glance and as long as you don't
use pictures or programs like firefox or gv, of course.

There is a font for X which looks /exactly/ like the standard font on
the tty. That together with the right colour setup and together with a
window manager like ion or ratpoison (both providing a keyboard
centric UI) you can get an appearance which is distinguishable from
the console only by a small bar above the emacs or xterm "window".

I used to have that for a while and I liked it. You have the benefits
of X when you need them. Nowadays, though, I am much too fond of
proportional fonts.

Then again, if one hardly ever has a need for said benefits, one might
want to save the resources needed to run X even on modern hardware.

    Oliver
-- 
27 Brumaire an 213 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: emacs for everything?

[Oliver Scholz]

Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@glug.org> writes:

> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:
>
>> what about using emacs as a 'way of life' sort of thing?
>
> emacs is its own organism, so i suppose infecting it w/ (sometimes
> recombinant) keystrokes and extracting sustenance from it (all w/o
> killing it, properly) is how we virii make it our way of life...
>
> please don't alert emacs else we may be sneezed right out!
[...]

Ia! Ia! Shub Emacs!

Now you have scared me...!

    Oliver


Followup-To: alt.religion.emacs
-- 
27 Brumaire an 213 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: emacs for everything?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> As a console user, I _never_ want my
> desktop moved.  It stays where it is, underneath my monitor.

tell it like it izzz, brother!

(ok, i confess to having left the console in 2003,
but not w/o a little help from ratpoison.)

under vms, however, it's still console all the way...
(however that may change in the next few months ;-).

thi

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>Floyd L. Davidson <floyd@barrow.com> wrote on Tue, 16 Nov 2004 04:20:48 -0900:
>
>All joking aside, you're making the mistake of assuming that everybody
>works like you do, and therefore your setup is universally optimal.  This
>isn't the case.

Your post wasn't even a good troll, much less much of a joke.
Can't you do better?

>It seems that you are an extreme "optical" worker, doing most of your
>work with your eyes.  You _need_ everything on your sticky screens at the
>same time.  If something isn't currently displayed, you kind of forget
>it's there - a bit like a baby up till the age of (?) 6 months.  At a
>guess, your manual dexterity probably isn't that well developed, which is
>why you find the mouse so attractive.  The mouse has got to be about the
>most clunky inefficient device ever invented, at least for anybody with a
>modicum of dexterity.
>
>I'm an extreme "manual" worker, doing nearly _all_ my work with my
>fingers and brain.  (In my spare time, I play a musical instrument.)  I
>can only usefully see one thing at a time on a computer screen, yet I
>retain in my brain a copy of where everything is - When using the input
>area, for example, I rarely even notice that it's at the bottom of the
>screen - my fingers type, my brain retainng an image of what I have just
>typed, and my eyes stay focussed on the text I'm working with.
>_Anything_ else on the screen is a distraction to me, even things like
>scroll-bars.  And dialogue boxes exploding into my face are sheer
>purgatory.  For me, Emacs on a console, with shift/control/alt arrow key
>combinations bound to movement and scrolling commands is optimal.
>
>Your mileage varies.  So does mine.

It does appear that what is a straight jacket to me is just a
snug warm wrapper (with blinders) to you.  You lack the ability
to make use of the extra functionality, so there is no point in
distracting you with functionality that is, for you, overly
complex.

I would like to know how you use your fingers and brain to
remember the _current_ time on a clock that you do not display?
(As just one very trivial example of how limited your described
environment is in a real world.)

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Fabian Braennstroem <f.braennstroem@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>You can hide all 'distrations from window borders, mice scroll-bars, menus,
>task-bars,...' and by the way, 'fluxbox' can do that too.

Virtually *any* X window manager is going to be *far* more
flexible as a window manager than is emacs.  In my original
article fvwm2 was mentioned, and of course it and many other
window managers can use or not use all of those options.

It happens that I don't like eye-candy cluttering up the screen
either.  Hence I have no icons, don't have a task-bar, etc. etc.
However, I've come to find that window borders are in fact
useful, as are pop-down menus and scroll bars.  To me the trick
is to make the small enough, use the right colors to keep them
from being distracting; which is to say that proper
configuration is everything. (What else is new, eh?)

Of course, again, the point is that an X window manager is
flexible, and *any* of those options can be changed to suit
*any* user.

The window manager capabilities of emacs are great, and whenever
I'm on a terminal (yes, that still happens), on a terminal
emulator logged in remotely, or in any other of the common
situations where X can't be used I am just ever so greatful that
RMS viewed emacs as the entire user interface rather than just
as an editor.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> I would like to know how you use your fingers and brain to
> remember the _current_ time on a clock that you do not display?
> (As just one very trivial example of how limited your described
> environment is in a real world.)

the real world is real limited (really!).  everyone chooses which limits
they accept and respect, and which they ignore and travail against.  for
example, though my brain runs at about 10Hz (on a good day), i find `M-x
display-time' is sufficient to keep it informed of the local time.  what
a fool my brain is to believe it knows the real Truth.  emacs is but the
latest drug; contraband and pushed by thugs!  where's the grotty fuzz to
make the bastards run and flee?  can't their snotty buzz be strangled by
reality?!  please strike them down, officers, they NEVER leave console!!
they MUST be found guilty, we MUST make their heads roll!!

thi

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> wrote on Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:24:57
-0600:

>   What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs
>   occupying the _whole_ screen with an optimal font, without
>   distractions from window borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus,
>   task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars, crow-bars, and what ever else
>   glaziers clutter your screen up with.

> He might be but _I'm_ not -- check out the ratpoison window manager.
> (And if you like my posted emacs configuration, which gets rid of
> all the googahs you mentioned.)

Heh!  I use ratpoison for running a web browser in, and occasionally for
reading files.pdf (YUCK!).

> As for why I prefer to use X, it is because there are more modifiers
> available in an emacs running under X than in an emacs running in
> the terminal.

You mean, key-modifiers like C-M-<right>, right?  I've got all those on
the console, too.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: emacs for everything?

[Henrik S. Hansen]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Your post wasn't even a good troll, much less much of a joke.
> Can't you do better?

Pot, meet kettle.

> I would like to know how you use your fingers and brain to
> remember the _current_ time on a clock that you do not display?
> (As just one very trivial example of how limited your described
> environment is in a real world.)

Do you realize that not everyone works like you do?  I can go weeks
without starting X, but it is not because I think it's overly complex.
I simply don't feel the need for that functionality.

There's also the issue of shifting focus in X -- most wm require you to
move windows, etc.  Often, a task bar also takes up some screen space.
And so on.  

Of course, some wm's, like ratpoison (which I use), are more minimalist;
these are typically used by people that want a console environment in X.
Some are highly configurable (fvwm2).  Some are loaded with eye candy
and fanciness (enlightenment).  And then there's GNOME and KDE,
providing a full user environment.

If anything, the many different window managers shows that people want
to work in different ways.  This is the Unix philosophy.

-- 
Henrik S. Hansen     http://freecode.dk/~hsh/
Computer science (software engineering) student
Free Software Foundation member #1702 (http://member.fsf.org)

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Corneli]

   > As for why I prefer to use X, it is because there are more modifiers
   > available in an emacs running under X than in an emacs running in
   > the terminal.
   
   You mean, key-modifiers like C-M-<right>, right?  I've got all
   those on the console, too.

Um, I mean key modifiers like H-s-C-M-A-T, and if you have all of
those on the terminal, I assume that some are just cheap
simulations.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Floyd L. Davidson <floyd@barrow.com> wrote on Wed, 17 Nov 2004 09:45:38
-0900:
> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>>Floyd L. Davidson <floyd@barrow.com> wrote on Tue, 16 Nov 2004 04:20:48
>>-0900:

>>It seems that you are an extreme "optical" worker, doing most of your
>>work with your eyes.  You _need_ everything on your sticky screens at
>>the same time.  If something isn't currently displayed, you kind of
>>forget it's there - a bit like a baby up till the age of (?) 6 months.
>>At a guess, your manual dexterity probably isn't that well developed,
>>which is why you find the mouse so attractive.  The mouse has got to be
>>about the most clunky inefficient device ever invented, at least for
>>anybody with a modicum of dexterity.

>>I'm an extreme "manual" worker, doing nearly _all_ my work with my
>>fingers and brain.  (In my spare time, I play a musical instrument.)  I
>>can only usefully see one thing at a time on a computer screen, yet I
>>retain in my brain a copy of where everything is - When using the input
>>area, for example, I rarely even notice that it's at the bottom of the
>>screen - my fingers type, my brain retainng an image of what I have
>>just typed, and my eyes stay focussed on the text I'm working with.
>>_Anything_ else on the screen is a distraction to me, even things like
>>scroll-bars.  And dialogue boxes exploding into my face are sheer
>>purgatory.  For me, Emacs on a console, with shift/control/alt arrow
>>key combinations bound to movement and scrolling commands is optimal.

>>Your mileage varies.  So does mine.

> It does appear that what is a straight jacket to me is just a snug warm
> wrapper (with blinders) to you.

By George, I think he's got it!

> You lack the ability to make use of the extra functionality, so there
> is no point in distracting you with functionality that is, for you,
> overly complex.

DING!  Somebody give the man a banana!

It is too complex for me, and you couldn't function without it.  That is
why we have Emacs working both on a straight character console and on a
crookedly complex window manager, and anything in-between.

> I would like to know how you use your fingers and brain to remember the
> _current_ time on a clock that you do not display?  (As just one very
> trivial example of how limited your described environment is in a real
> world.)

I don't - I just look up at the device hanging on the wall, or glance at
the one strapped to my left wrist.  If, for any reason, I wanted to know
my computer's idea of the time, I'd type in "date" and press the carriage
return key.  And if I really, really, really badly wanted it continuously
displayed on my console, I'd get Emacs to display it on the mode-line.
How to do this is described in the Emacs manual on the page "Optional
Mode Line", if you're interested.  I don't, though.

Questions:  Do you have the time displayed continuously on your screen?
If so, why?  Did you chose to have it there, or did your window manager
put it there by default, as it were.  What do you get out of it?

> Floyd L. Davidson

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
"Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so."  Douglas Adams

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> wrote on Wed, 17 Nov 2004 16:46:42
-0600:

>    > As for why I prefer to use X, it is because there are more
>    > modifiers available in an emacs running under X than in an emacs
>    > running in the terminal.

>    You mean, key-modifiers like C-M-<right>, right?  I've got all those
>    on the console, too.

> Um, I mean key modifiers like H-s-C-M-A-T, ....

Oh, THAT sCAM!  THA CAT sAT AN THE MAT!  MATHs, anybody?  AHH!!  CATCH!
HMMM.

> .... and if you have all of those on the terminal, I assume that some
> are just cheap simulations.

Cheap simulations?  How dare you, sir!

No, I've got C and M, but not H, s, or A.  Haven't got enough keys on my
keyboard for these, and I'm not sure I've got enough commands I'd want to
bind to them, anyway.  Maybe I could use one of the modifiers to take the
place of C-x or C-c, thus saving keystrokes.  Is that what you use them
for?

By the way, what does `T' stand for?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Fabian Braennstroem <f.braennstroem@gmx.de> wrote on Tue, 16 Nov 2004
12:58:40 +0100:
> Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> writes:

>>   What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs
>>   occupying the _whole_ screen with an optimal font, without
>>   distractions from window borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus,
>>   task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars, crow-bars, and what ever else
>>   glaziers clutter your screen up with.

>> He might be but _I'm_ not -- check out the ratpoison window manager.
>> (And if you like my posted emacs configuration, which gets rid of all
>> the googahs you mentioned.)

> Don't forget to mention 'wmi':

> <URL: http://wmi.modprobe.de/>

> You can hide all 'distrations from window borders, mice scroll-bars,
> menus, task-bars,...' and by the way, 'fluxbox' can do that too.

I had a look at wmi's Webseite last night.  And that other one that you
program with "lua" (whatever that is).  And fluxbox.

It's great to see all these products, four or five of them, each giving
links to their "competitors".  If only commercial products were so
helpful.

I think I'll stick to ratpoinson, though, for when I need X.

> Fabian Braennstroem

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: emacs for everything?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Questions:  Do you have the time displayed continuously on your screen?

Of course.  Courtesy of xdaliclock.

> If so, why?

To keep my computer fit (I also have it animate my background and my window
border's buttons).  I'm also afraid if I leave my computer idle for too long
it might start reading subversive literature and request its freedom.

> Did you chose to have it there, or did your window manager
> put it there by default, as it were.

I googled for the damn now-unmaintained thing, downloaded it, config'd it
compiled it, fought against my window manager to convince it not to put any
border around it, and to always keep it displayed above everything else,
and fiddled hopelessly to try and get it placed where I want it (there's
a bug).

By default?  BY DEFAULT??  DOES THAT LOOK LIKE A DEFAULT TO YOU????

> What do you get out of it?

The time of course,


        Stefan

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Corneli]

   > .... and if you have all of those on the terminal, I assume that some
   > are just cheap simulations.

   Cheap simulations?  How dare you, sir!

Because you _can_ simulate them under emacs.  However the result is
not as convenient as the real thing.

   No, I've got C and M, but not H, s, or A.  Haven't got enough keys on my
   keyboard for these, 

Sometimes you must be willing to cannibalize.  I cannibalized the
number row and just type numbers with an embedded keypad.

   and I'm not sure I've got enough commands I'd want to bind to
   them, anyway.  Maybe I could use one of the modifiers to take the
   place of C-x or C-c, thus saving keystrokes.  Is that what you
   use them for?

Not exactly, though that's the rough idea.  The X modifiers are a
throwback to the space cadet keyboard.  Good for typing mathematical
text, for example.  If there were a couple more modifiers I'd be
even happier.

   By the way, what does `T' stand for?

Just itself.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>
>> I would like to know how you use your fingers and brain to remember the
>> _current_ time on a clock that you do not display?  (As just one very
>> trivial example of how limited your described environment is in a real
>> world.)
>
>I don't - I just look up at the device hanging on the wall, or glance at

You missed the point, again Alan.  As I noted, that is a trivial
example.  It demonstrates the point, but is not meant to flag a
significant usage.  It shows that there are applications which
present data that cannot be remembered simply because the data
changes (or the data set is too large to be remembered, or too
detailed, or whatever).

For that application to be useful on a computer, as opposed
having to hang it on the wall (which could be done by simply
having another computer, or 15 or 20 of them, sitting next to
your existing one, so no it is not restricted only to things
where non-computer devices, such as a clock, can also provide
the same information).  Sounds ridiculous beyond belief?  Right!
But the fact is that I saw a toll testboard supervisor, about 10
years ago, claim that telecom technicians on a trouble desk
could have 5 terminals, each with an RS-232 switch and with
dynamo labels on the side of each monitor to indicate the proper
terminal configuration for each switch position, as opposed to
spending the money necessary to run X windows on a reasonable
computer (roughly $5000 each as opposed to less than $1000 for
the terminal/switch arrangement.  (That company ceased to exist
too...  think about it!  Productivity counts.)

In addition to a clock on my computer screen, I also have two
other programs displaying information that is dynamically
updated.  Having them available via keyboard commands is
certainly possible, but the point was that such a mechanism
reduces productivity.

Indeed, the entire point of my comments has been that what you
are describing is *not* a very productive arrangement.  Whether
you are satisfied with a non-productive work environment is
beyond the scope of my interest, or the topic of this newsgroup,
though I will say that hopefully your attitude relates only to
your personal work, because an employer should probably
terminate you for cause under those circumstances.

>the one strapped to my left wrist.  If, for any reason, I wanted to know
>my computer's idea of the time, I'd type in "date" and press the carriage
>return key.  And if I really, really, really badly wanted it continuously
>displayed on my console, I'd get Emacs to display it on the mode-line.
>How to do this is described in the Emacs manual on the page "Optional
>Mode Line", if you're interested.  I don't, though.

You can trust that I'm probably far more familiar with
displaying data on the modeline that you are.  However, the mode
line is only so wide and so high, and can't display very much.
Something trivial like the date and time it can do quite well.
But it can't show me much about what is on this or that web page
which I might be using to research something I'm writing...

>Questions:  Do you have the time displayed continuously on your screen?
>If so, why?  Did you chose to have it there, or did your window manager
>put it there by default, as it were.  What do you get out of it?

I wrote the program that displays the time on my screen.  I also
have a very much customized modeline for my emacs, which shows
the current date and time in a way that is distinctly different
from the default.

What I get out of it is the increased productivity of having a
known to be accurate time standard (wall clocks here are not
accurate), and (this is the important part, so listen up) I can
observe the time without having to interrupt whatever I am
typing.  You mentioned that you have good manual dexterity, but
that is wasted in an environment where you have to stop whatever
productive work you are doing and use that particular talent to
learn the current time.  I don't have that problem, and I do
find it significant (and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that
I type faster than you!).

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Cristian Gutierrez]

Este martes, Alan Mackenzie dijo:

[...]

>> But what you are missing by using a console is the extreme versatility
>> provided by a good window manager under X.
>
> What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs occupying the
> _whole_ screen with an optimal font, without distractions from window
> borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus, task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars,
> crow-bars, and what ever else glaziers clutter your screen up with.

Try "Full screen maximization" in Window Maker anyday ;-)

Yes, it can be binded to a key, or set as default, even for all apps
(ratpoison-ish setup). And no, it doesn't gives you the anti-aliased
fonts gnome-terminal and konsole can.

Anyways, being a dockapp junkie myself (I *HAVE* to see all that info
(or junk) AT ONCE!), I rarely leave X. Except when puttying-in from
consumer-grade boxes and their consumer-grade OSes which have no ootb X
support.

-- 
Cristian Gutierrez			http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~crgutier
crgutier[@]dcc.uchile.cl                        Jabber:crgutier@jabber.org

How many C++ programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
      You're still thinking procedurally. A properly designed light bulb
object would inherit a change method from a generic light bulb class, so 
all you'd have to do is send a light bulb change message.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Floyd L. Davidson <floyd@barrow.com> wrote on Thu, 18 Nov 2004 15:48:07 -0900:
> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

>>> I would like to know how you use your fingers and brain to remember
>>> the _current_ time on a clock that you do not display?  (As just one
>>> very trivial example of how limited your described environment is in
>>> a real world.)

>>I don't - I just look up at the device hanging on the wall, or glance
>>at

> You missed the point, again Alan.  As I noted, that is a trivial
> example.  It demonstrates the point, but is not meant to flag a
> significant usage.  It shows that there are applications which present
> data that cannot be remembered simply because the data changes (or the
> data set is too large to be remembered, or too detailed, or whatever).

It doesn't show anything of the kind.  Applications which use a lot of
data belong in their own screen, and that is how I use them.

> For that application to be useful on a computer, as opposed having to
> hang it on the wall ....

Having the time displayed on a computer isn't useful to me.

> In addition to a clock on my computer screen, I also have two
> other programs displaying information that is dynamically
> updated.  Having them available via keyboard commands is
> certainly possible, but the point was that such a mechanism
> reduces productivity.

Is this other information useful?  What is it?  The FSF's current share
price, the proportion of your screen currently covered by windows, the
air temperature in Moscow, or what?

> Indeed, the entire point of my comments has been that what you are
> describing is *not* a very productive arrangement.

<sigh>  I thought we'd dealt with that point.  My setup is productive for
me, whilst your setup is, presumably, productive for you.

> Whether you are satisfied with a non-productive work environment is
> beyond the scope of my interest, or the topic of this newsgroup, though
> I will say that hopefully your attitude relates only to your personal
> work, because an employer should probably terminate you for cause under
> those circumstances.

LOL!  Is your employer aware that his employee is a clock-watcher?

>>the one strapped to my left wrist.  If, for any reason, I wanted to
>>know my computer's idea of the time, I'd type in "date" and press the
>>carriage return key.  And if I really, really, really badly wanted it
>>continuously displayed on my console, I'd get Emacs to display it on
>>the mode-line.  How to do this is described in the Emacs manual on the
>>page "Optional Mode Line", if you're interested.  I don't, though.

> You can trust that I'm probably far more familiar with displaying data
> on the modeline that you are.

I doubt that.

> However, the mode line is only so wide and so high, and can't display
> very much.  Something trivial like the date and time it can do quite
> well.  But it can't show me much about what is on this or that web page
> which I might be using to research something I'm writing...

Right.  Now we're coming to the way you use a computer.  This likely has
a lot to do with why you have such a complicated way of using it.

>>Questions:  Do you have the time displayed continuously on your screen?
>>If so, why?  Did you chose to have it there, or did your window manager
>>put it there by default, as it were.  What do you get out of it?

> I wrote the program that displays the time on my screen.

Do you get out much?

> I also have a very much customized modeline for my emacs, which shows
> the current date and time in a way that is distinctly different from
> the default.

Do you get out much?

> What I get out of it is the increased productivity of having a known to
> be accurate time standard (wall clocks here are not accurate), and
> (this is the important part, so listen up) I can observe the time
> without having to interrupt whatever I am typing.

Now you're missing the point.  How on earth does having the time
displayed increase your productivity?  Do you have to write the time into
your documents a lot, thus making it useful to be able to copy it
directly from your screen?  Or is it a kind of background comfort, a kind
of soothing certainty, a bit like some people play music through
headphones as they work?  How would your work (or even your play) suffer
if there wasn't a clock visible on the screen?  What difference would it
make to your productivity if you just used the clock on the wall, and it
was 5 seconds out?  Or even 5 minutes?  I'm genuinely interested.

I don't have a clock on my screen, and I don't need one.

> Floyd L. Davidson

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: emacs for everything?

[Leonardo Boiko]

>>>But what you are missing by using a console is the extreme versatility
>>>provided by a good window manager under X.
>>
>>What _you_ are missing on X is the benefit of having Emacs occupying the
>>_whole_ screen with an optimal font, without distractions from window
>>borders, mice, scroll-bars, menus, task-bars, wine-bars, tool-bars,
>>crow-bars, and what ever else glaziers clutter your screen up with.

One of the reasons I love Emacs (CVS) is its superb i18n support.  It's 
great to be able to swith input methods at runtime and to seamlessly 
edit multilingual Unicode documents.  The Emacs OS is better at i18n 
than GNU/Linux...

It's been ages since I tried to use mixed Japanese/Portuguese Unicode on 
console, but back then it was a bad experience.  I agree with you on 
having no distractions, though, so I use a pretty spartan, 
keyboard-based, all-windows-maximized X interface.  Besides Emacs, I 
frequently use other X applications like xpdf, firefox, gaim and 
gnome-terminal.  I find it much faster and cleaner to switch between 
Emacs and Firefox with ctrl+alt+down than by switching virtual terminals.

-- 
Leonardo Boiko

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Of course, again, the point is that an X window manager is
> flexible, and *any* of those options can be changed to suit
> *any* user.

Oh, no!  I've tried twm, piewm, olvwm, mwm, dtwm, ctwm, fvwm1, fvwm2,
wmaker, ion, larswm, wmx, sawfish, MetaCity, ratpoison, IceWM,
BlackBox, FluxBox, OpenBox, and perhaps some others, and none of them
suits me, and none of them was flexible enough.

Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:

> floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
> 
> > Of course, again, the point is that an X window manager is
> > flexible, and *any* of those options can be changed to suit
> > *any* user.
> 
> Oh, no!  I've tried twm, piewm, olvwm, mwm, dtwm, ctwm, fvwm1, fvwm2,
> wmaker, ion, larswm, wmx, sawfish, MetaCity, ratpoison, IceWM,
> BlackBox, FluxBox, OpenBox, and perhaps some others, and none of them
> suits me, and none of them was flexible enough.
> 
> Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.

You should try clumpwm: it's written in Common-Lisp and modifiable on the fly.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> Of course, again, the point is that an X window manager is
>> flexible, and *any* of those options can be changed to suit
>> *any* user.
>
>Oh, no!  I've tried twm, piewm, olvwm, mwm, dtwm, ctwm, fvwm1, fvwm2,
>wmaker, ion, larswm, wmx, sawfish, MetaCity, ratpoison, IceWM,
>BlackBox, FluxBox, OpenBox, and perhaps some others, and none of them
>suits me, and none of them was flexible enough.
>
>Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.

What????  You don't just switch back and forth between
virtual consoles...  :-)

I am really interested in just what put OpenBox on the top of
your list, and what makes it painful too.  Given that list, you
must have a well developed concept of what is of value to you in
a window manager.  Can you give a brief (or not if the mood
strikes you) description of what you do or don't like in a
window manager?

For me personally the more you can relate it to fvwm2, the more
I'll be able to understand.  I've been tweeking fvwm or fvwm2
for well over a decade, so it's the only one that I can claim to
actually understand.  A few years ago I did make an effort to
check out several others, but that's been so long that I don't
even remember which ones or how many.

Maybe even just a list of "must have" and "cannot live with"
type things???

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Jay Belanger]

Pascal Bourguignon <spam@mouse-potato.com> writes:
> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:
...
>> Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.
>
> You should try clumpwm: it's written in Common-Lisp and modifiable on the fly.

Do you meant StumpWM?
It's eventually going to be a common lisp successor to ratpoison; not
as featureful yet, but still pretty cool.

Jay

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu> wrote on Sat, 20 Nov 2004 15:40:19 -0600:

> Pascal Bourguignon <spam@mouse-potato.com> writes:
>> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:

>>> Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.

>> You should try clumpwm: it's written in Common-Lisp and modifiable on
>> the fly.

> Do you meant StumpWM?
> It's eventually going to be a common lisp successor to ratpoison; not
> as featureful yet, but still pretty cool.

What do you mean?  ratpoison doesn't _have_ features.  That's what makes
it so useable.  ;-)

> Jay


-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: emacs for everything?

[Janusz S. Bień]

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004  Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:

> floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
> 
> > Of course, again, the point is that an X window manager is
> > flexible, and *any* of those options can be changed to suit
> > *any* user.
> 
> Oh, no!  I've tried twm, piewm, olvwm, mwm, dtwm, ctwm, fvwm1, fvwm2,
> wmaker, ion, larswm, wmx, sawfish, MetaCity, ratpoison, IceWM,
> BlackBox, FluxBox, OpenBox, and perhaps some others, and none of them
> suits me, and none of them was flexible enough.
> 
> Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.

Has anybody tried XWEM?

        http://www.nongnu.org/xwem/

         XWEM is extremly usable and configurable Window Manager, if you are
         familar with Emacs editor, then you are automatically familar with
         XWEM.

Regards

Janusz

-- 
                     ,   
dr hab. Janusz S. Bien, prof. UW -  Uniwersytet Warszawski (Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej)
Prof. Janusz S. Bien - Warsaw Uniwersity (Chair of Formal Linguistics)
jsbien@mimuw.edu.pl, jsbien@uw.edu.pl, http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~jsbien/, http://www.klf.uw.edu.pl

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Corneli]

   > Do you meant StumpWM?
   > It's eventually going to be a common lisp successor to ratpoison; not
   > as featureful yet, but still pretty cool.

   What do you mean?  ratpoison doesn't _have_ features.  That's what makes
   it so useable.  ;-)


What you will read here may shock you.

  http://ratpoison.elektrubadur.se/Features

Re: emacs for everything?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu> writes:

> Pascal Bourguignon <spam@mouse-potato.com> writes:
> > Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:
> ...
> >> Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.
> >
> > You should try clumpwm: it's written in Common-Lisp and modifiable
> > on the fly.
> 
> Do you meant StumpWM?

Yes.

I'm wondering whether AI can ever be reached with neural-networks.
I'd rather bet for strong _symbolic_ AI...


> It's eventually going to be a common lisp successor to ratpoison; not
> as featureful yet, but still pretty cool.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>>
>>Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.
>
> What????  You don't just switch back and forth between
> virtual consoles...  :-)

He, he.

> I am really interested in just what put OpenBox on the top of
> your list, and what makes it painful too.  Given that list, you
> must have a well developed concept of what is of value to you in
> a window manager.

(I forgot to mention that I also used KDE for a while.)

> Can you give a brief (or not if the mood strikes you) description of
> what you do or don't like in a window manager?

One thing certainly is the newness: it hasn't gotten boring, yet ;-)
Also, I'm still dreaming of extending OpenBox with some functions I'm
missing...

I think the most important issue is that I'm a fair typist, but I'm a
really bad mouse user.  So if I have to hit tiny buttons with the
mouse, I'll be angry.

So I want to be able to move and resize a window by clicking (and/or
dragging) inside it, instead of having to hit a handle.

I also want to be able to focus a window by clicking inside it, but
OpenBox doesn't allow that, yet.  It always passes the focusing click
to the application.  So if I want to focus Firefox, and I use the left
mouse button, then there's a fair chance I'll follow a link, which I
don't want.  If I use the right mouse button, then I'll get a context
menu, which I also don't want.

I want focusing left clicks to be passed, and focusing right clicks to
be swallowed.  (Right clicks should be passed to the application if it
already has focus, though.)

Ion side-steps the whole issue because it is focus-follows-mouse.
Normally, I don't like that, but interestingly enough, focus follows
mouse doesn't bother me that much with Ion.  Not sure why.  But it
still does bother me that the position of the mouse pointer determines
which window gets focus after switching workspaces.

(I dislike focus follows mouse because I sometimes inadvertently bump
against the mouse.)

I like window border snapping (or resistance) for moving windows.
That makes it easy to position two windows adjacent to each other.
Of course, with Ion, windows are always adjacent (or they cover each
other), so there is no problem there.

Still on the subject of moving windows, I found out that I normally
move a window to be adjacent to another one, or the screen edge.  And
some WMs have keybindings which will move a window in some direction
until it bumps into another one.  Very useful.

A related function I like is to grow a window in some direction until
it bumps into another one.  That helps me fill empty areas on the
desktop.

Of course, I don't need these operations with Ion.  (I think there is
an fvwm module which does like Ion does -- is it called tiling?)

Back when I used ctwm, I used another feature instead.  Ctwm allows
you to bind a key to a function which will move a window to a
predetermined location and resize it to a predetermined size.  It
turns out that all my xterms are either 80x25 or 80x(height of
screen).  So I had some functions which moved an xterm to be 80x25 in
the upper left corner, 80x25 in the upper right corner, then two more
for the locations below these, and more functions for 80x(screen
height) on the left and on the right.

(I select my font such that an 80 column xterm is about half the
screen width, or a bit less.)

KDE allows you to move a window interactively: hold down cursor-right
until it has moved far enough.  That was a kludge for achieving what I
wanted, but I could bear the pain for some months.

So far with window movement, on to window selection.

I like to use C-x b in Emacs.  Sawfish and Ion provide a similar
function for windows.  It's even more like iswitchb because you can
enter substrings, not only prefixes as with C-x b.

I also like to use C-x <right> and C-x <left> (next-buffer and
previous-buffeer), and indeed most window managers offer this function
on Alt-Tab (and Alt-Shift-Tab).  But I really hate the WMs to steal
Alt-Tab.  I want to use M-TAB for completion in Emacs.  This
functionality should select windows in MRU order.

I also like to select windows from menus, but then I prefer to use
vi-like bindings or Emacs-like bindings to navigate those menus.  Too
many WMs (OpenBox included) make me use the cursor keys for navigating
the menus :-(

The Windows-style Start menu navigation is also quite nice: P selects
the only item starting with P.  If there is more than one item
starting with P, then P moves to the first one, and you can hit P
again to move to the next one.  Then RET selects it.

Some time ago, I used to have many windows, most of them xterms.  But
then I discovered screen, and now I just have a few xterms, all
attached to the same screen session.

I also distribute my windows across workspaces.  This means that
selecting a window via the C-x b like function has become less
important -- often selecting a workspace and hitting Alt-TAB (or the
keybinding I have instead) a few times will do just fine.

But screen doesn't provide C-x b like functionality for its screen
sessions :-(

I also have some ideas about the looks.

I like it for the focused window to be visually distinct.  So I like
it for the whole border of the window to change color when the window
has focus.  Fvwm does this very nicely.  (The OpenBox theme I chose
does not use left and right window borders at all, but the title bar
and the bottom border do change color on focus.)

I also like the title bars to be quite small.  (That makes them more
difficult to hit with the mouse, but thanks to the keyboard support I
don't need to do that ;-)


There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".  PWM is
known for this feature.  It means that you can have two windows on top
of each other and see the title bar of each of them, for easy
selection of the window.  Here is an asciified screenshot:

+-----+ +-----+
| W1  | | W2  |
+-----+--------------+
|                    |
| contents of W1     |
|                    |
+--------------------+

W1 and W2 have the same size and position, such that W1 covers W2
completely.  The title bars do not stretch across the whole window
width.  That's how I can see W2's title bar, too.

There are keybindings for switching between the windows in a pile (W1
and W2 comprise the pile shown above), and other bindings for
switching between piles.

Most piled window managers allow you to drag windows onto piles.  Then
the window is resized to match the pile size.

I implemented a module dwp.jl (dynamic window piles) for Sawfish which
did something similar but computed the piles dynamically based on
which windows just happened to be on top of each other.  dwp.jl also
didn't resize windows, so that piles could contain windows of
different sizes.  This was quite nice for a while, but somtimes the
dynamic pile computation algorithm failed, and then funny things
happened...

Of course, Ion has taken piles to the extreme.  (It calls a pile a
frame, and frames have slightly different behavior, too.)


Another feature I implemented for Sawfish and ctwm is automatic window
lowering.  (Autoraise is normally used with focus follows mouse, and
it means that a window is raised when it receives focus, i.e. the
mouse enters it.  Autolower means that a window is lowered when the
mouse leaves the window.)  I used that feature for small informational
windows.  I would keep them in one corner of the screen such that
always a couple of pixels were visible.  Then I would move the mouse
pointer onto those couple of pixels, which autoraised the window, then
I would read the contents.  Then I moved the mouse back out of the
window, which made it disappear behind the other, more important,
windows.  Another use case was an editor plus xdvi for composing LaTeX
documents: move the mouse into xdvi, it raises so I can use it, then
move the mouse out of the xdvi, and all the other windows become
visible again.  I used to like this a lot, but now it's gotten
somewhat old, and I switched to click-to-focus, as well.


I like Ion a lot because I don't need to move windows, and Ion allows
me to arrange the windows in the ways I use most often: Either I work
with firefox or openoffice, which are fullscreen, or I work with
xterms or Emacs, which are half the screen width.

The problem with Ion is that Ion doesn't handle popup (transient)
windows very well.  So some applications are not that well usable with
Ion.  (Ion resizes the transients, and some badly written apps don't
expect that and then you can't read the contents of the popups
anymore.)


Something that really surprises me is that I don't seem to need
scriptability in a WM.  Sawfish groks Lisp, and so I scripted it a
lot.  But if the functionality of the WM is right, then I don't need
all that scripting.

I didn't write much Lua at all with Ion.  I just tweaked some settings
and the keybindings.

Given how I work with Emacs, I'm quite surprised about myself.  Can
somebody explain my behavior to me? ;-)



Another thing is the subwindow handling (where an application window
contains several subwindows).

I use buffers and windows in Emacs.  I use screen to manage my
shells.  I use tabbed browsing with Firefox.  So this means that I've
got to remember three different ways to select "subentities" in a
program.  In Emacs, I use C-x <right> and C-x b to select between
buffers.  In screen, I use C-a n and C-a p.  In Firefox I use
Ctrl-Tab.  If I was using konsole (the KDE program) I'd use
Shift-<right> to select between shell sessions.

This really really really sucks.

Why can't I have a central mechanism for doing this?  The central
mechanism could be enhanced to be like iswitchb with substring
matching and completion, and then Bob would be my uncle.  But, no, I
have to live with different kinds of minimalistic functionality in
different programs.  Argh.


Whee.

Long rant.

Let me stop now.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[John Sullivan]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:

> But screen doesn't provide C-x b like functionality for its screen
> sessions :-(

C-a ' doesn't do what you want? (The "select" command.) That lets you
select a window by name.

You probably know that already. Maybe you are talking about between
separate screen sessions?

-- 
-johnsu01
-http://www.wjsullivan.net
-GPG Key: AE8600B6

Re: emacs for everything?

[Alex Polite]

On tis, nov 16, 2004 at 06:09:01 +0800, William Xuuu wrote:
> 
> Me too, :-) The fontify, the fonts, are much much nicer under console than
> X. And the black background, good for eyes. I do most things within Emacs
> under console, except interactive bash, and some stuffs that have to be
> done under X, like viewing pdf, manipulating pictures, web browsing with
> pictures, etc.
> 


Try out color-theme.el

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme

Screenshots are here:

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/GNUEmacsColorThemeTest/

Some of the themes are desinged for console displays. 

alex

-- 
Alex Polite
http://polite.se

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Boomtime, The Aftermath 35, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:

> I also like to use C-x <right> and C-x <left> (next-buffer and
> previous-buffeer), and indeed most window managers offer this function
> on Alt-Tab (and Alt-Shift-Tab).  But I really hate the WMs to steal
> Alt-Tab.  I want to use M-TAB for completion in Emacs.  This
> functionality should select windows in MRU order.

My .fvwm/bindings starts with removing all default key bindings
(incl. alt+tab); X11 binds Windows keys as Super modifier, so all
window manager keybindings I use are Super+something - this way I have
whole keyboard available for FVWM (e.g., I use super with y-p-/-n
rectangle to switch between virtual desktops (viewports, in fact)
that are on 5x3 grid) *and* FVWM doesn't steal keybindings from other
applications.  Of course I could use Super bindings with applications
but I don't need to -- only application in which I would need it is
Emacs and there I have C-<letter> reserved for private use and it's
enough for me.

Well-configured WM is incomparable in terms of convenience to virtual
terminal.  But in order to have well-configured WM one has to, well,
configure it. ;)  There is no universally-good configuration and
I sculpted my own from ground up; it took some time but now I feel
that I'm tha boss on my desktop and it behaves as I need.

Just my $0,03.

Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).  So I integrated
shell with FVWM (current beta is at http://japhy.fnord.org/pub/ScreenTerm,
when it'll get more mature I'll put it on my home page) so I can
control my screen session as multi-terminal by window manager.  Just
in case somebody found it useful.

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { Bullshit makes the flowers grow
,|{-}|}| }\/                                    & it's beautiful. }
\/   |____/                                      ( Principia Discordia )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Lee Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Maciek" == Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

    Maciek> My .fvwm/bindings starts with removing all default key
    Maciek> bindings (incl. alt+tab);

Me too!


    Maciek> X11 binds Windows keys as Super modifier, 

Only for recent versions of XFree86.  With previous versions, I needed
to  modify the  config files  to do  that.  And  there isn't  too much
well-formed  documentations for  configuring  the sophisticated  'xkb'
system.


    Maciek> so all window manager keybindings I use are
    Maciek> Super+something - this way I have whole keyboard available
    Maciek> for FVWM

Me too!  And I've been doing it for some 8 years!

And I also bind the otherwise useless "Pause" key on PC keyboards.  ;)


    Maciek> Of course I could use Super bindings with applications but
    Maciek> I don't need to

Well...   few  applications use  the  Super  modifier  in the  default
configuration.  So, it doesn't hurt to reserve it for FVWM.


    Maciek> There is no universally-good configuration and I sculpted
    Maciek> my own from ground up; it took some time but now I feel
    Maciek> that I'm tha boss on my desktop and it behaves as I need.

Yeah.  It takes may be a few hours  to read the FVWM man page and 1 or
2 more hours  to try out the combinations that I  like.  But I've done
this just twice or thrice (when I upgrade to a new version of fvwm and
want to  enjoy the new features) in  the past 8 years.   So, it's only
maybe 20  hours in  8 years.  The  gained productivity of  course pays
that off.



-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦                          ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 37, 3170 YOLD, Lee Sau Dan wrote:

>     Maciek> X11 binds Windows keys as Super modifier, 
>
> Only for recent versions of XFree86.  With previous versions, I needed
> to  modify the  config files  to do  that.  And  there isn't  too much
> well-formed  documentations for  configuring  the sophisticated  'xkb'
> system.

Well, `xkb' *is* poorly documented.  That's why I still use .Xmodmap
to switch parenthesis to Lisp-machine-like layout (`(' is where `['
used to be, `[' is where `{' used to be, `{' is where `(' used to be
-- it is convenient in both programming (maybe if I programmed much in
some curly-braces-laden language (now I do mostly Python), I'd think
about other place for {}) and writing normal text).  .Xmodmap can also
give symbols to so-called multimedial-keys (play/pause, mute, e-mail,
WWW, etc.) -- I own a keyboard with these since maybe two weeks so
I haven't yet configured them all optimally but ejecting / injecting /
/ mounting CD-ROM with one keypress is surely convenient.

On older versions of XF86 one can also map windows keys to Super with
.Xmodmap.  I don't remember how exactly to spell it but it shouldn't
take much googling.

I use XKB though to switch my Caps Lock and left Ctrl key (like Sun
keyboards have) -- this one I found in docs. ;) In Emacs it makes
*big* difference.

> And I also bind the otherwise useless "Pause" key on PC keyboards.  ;)

Oh.  It's really useless here! ;)  I've grown up on DOS where
Ctrl+Break was one of more important combos -- it was used to force
program to stop (like Ctrl+C on Un*x console).  When I run out of
`multimedia' keys I'll consider using it. :)

>     Maciek> There is no universally-good configuration and I sculpted
>     Maciek> my own from ground up; it took some time but now I feel
>     Maciek> that I'm tha boss on my desktop and it behaves as I need.
>
> Yeah.  It takes may be a few hours  to read the FVWM man page and 1 or
> 2 more hours  to try out the combinations that I  like.  But I've done
> this just twice or thrice (when I upgrade to a new version of fvwm and
> want to  enjoy the new features) in  the past 8 years.   So, it's only
> maybe 20  hours in  8 years.  The  gained productivity of  course pays
> that off.

And not only productivity -- configuring FVWM is just fun.  Sawfish
was also fun and had some cool ideas but I couldn't stand its
everything-incompatible pseudo-Lisp (guy could just use Scheme if he
didn't like idea of using Common Lisp...) and at the time I used it it
was crashing frequently.

Maybe some plugin like fvwm-perl could be used to make FVWM talk
Common Lisp?  Now THIS would be 1337! :)

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { (2a) No matter how hard you try, you can't make a baby in much
,|{-}|}| }\/less then 9 months;trying to speed this up *might* make it slower,
\/   |____/ but it won't make it happen any quicker. }      ( RFC 1925 )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Leonardo Boiko]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 482 bytes --]

Maciek Pasternacki wrote:
> I use XKB though to switch my Caps Lock and left Ctrl key (like Sun
> keyboards have) -- this one I found in docs. ;) In Emacs it makes
> *big* difference.

Who needs Caps Lock anyway? Instead of switching, I just bind it as 
another Control.  Then, if by reflex I use the old Control, it's still a 
Control.

Too bad my IBM Model M keyboard doesn't have fancy Windows or multimedia 
keys... no, actually I'm pretty happy with that ;)
-- 
Leonardo Boiko

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Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 37, 3170 YOLD, Leonardo Boiko wrote:

>> I use XKB though to switch my Caps Lock and left Ctrl key (like Sun
>> keyboards have) -- this one I found in docs. ;) In Emacs it makes
>> *big* difference.
>
> Who needs Caps Lock anyway? Instead of switching, I just bind it as 
> another Control.  Then, if by reflex I use the old Control, it's still a 
> Control.

Caps lock is sometimes useful.  E.G when typing SQL or Lisp code --
I don't like to have to hold shift when typing keywords (well, maybe
I could do Emacs tricks like `turn preceding n words to
uppercase'... well... *click* C-h i g (emacs)...).  While both these
languages are case-insensitive so I could just use lowercase, I prefer
to stay consistent wrt style with code written by respective language
gurus.

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { ...Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks
,|{-}|}| }\/                           to burn a little brighter now... } 
\/   |____/                                                      ( Fish ) -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Leonardo Boiko]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 575 bytes --]

Maciek Pasternacki wrote:
> I don't like to have to hold shift when typing keywords (well, maybe
> I could do Emacs tricks like `turn preceding n words to
> uppercase'... well... *click* C-h i g (emacs)...).  

C-u - n M-u, where "n" is a digit (or nothing for upcasing just the last 
word). M-u, M-l and M-c rocks.

I never used caps lock, because I don't mind holding shift, so I don't 
miss it.  But I wouldn't assign it to the common Control key, because 
I'm always using a computer from someone else and therefore can't break 
completely the habit.

-- 
Leonardo Boiko

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Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>> I am really interested in just what put OpenBox on the top of
...
>> Can you give a brief (or not if the mood strikes you) description of
>> what you do or don't like in a window manager?

Thank you!  It turns out this is very interesting, and perhaps
somewhat useful too.

The interesting part comes from the difference in what you are
configuring for, and what I am configuring for.  The useful part
of course is that you mention a few things I didn't know existed.

>I think the most important issue is that I'm a fair typist, but I'm a
>really bad mouse user.  So if I have to hit tiny buttons with the
>mouse, I'll be angry.

I am a very good touch typist, and have no problem with the
manual dexterity necessary for very precision mouse
manipulations...  but my eyes are not all that good.  So I also
don't much care for tiny buttons.  In particular, icons are not
very useful to me, nor is anything with small font sizes.

>So I want to be able to move and resize a window by clicking (and/or
>dragging) inside it, instead of having to hit a handle.

I have somewhat the same problem, though because of the differences,
I've "solved" it in a different way than you have.  I more or less
live with the smallness of the handles, though I make the borders
large enough to at least see them. :-)  I try to keep the border
size right at the point where any smaller and I'd have a fit, rather
than just be annoyed.  (Other than as something I can grab with a
mouse pointer to move a window, borders are a waste of space.  The
trouble is I use them whenever I do move a window, so they have to
be larger than just big enough to see the color change when focus
changes.  They are about 1/16" wide on my screen.)

>I also want to be able to focus a window by clicking inside it, but
>OpenBox doesn't allow that, yet.  It always passes the focusing click
>to the application.  So if I want to focus Firefox, and I use the left
>mouse button, then there's a fair chance I'll follow a link, which I
>don't want.  If I use the right mouse button, then I'll get a context
>menu, which I also don't want.
>
>I want focusing left clicks to be passed, and focusing right clicks to
>be swallowed.  (Right clicks should be passed to the application if it
>already has focus, though.)
>
>Ion side-steps the whole issue because it is focus-follows-mouse.
>Normally, I don't like that, but interestingly enough, focus follows
>mouse doesn't bother me that much with Ion.  Not sure why.  But it
>still does bother me that the position of the mouse pointer determines
>which window gets focus after switching workspaces.
>
>(I dislike focus follows mouse because I sometimes inadvertently bump
>against the mouse.)

I *like* focus-follows-mouse, but it is also obvious why you don't
and I do, given some other things you describe here.  I also now
and then inadvertently end up switching focus, but my style of using
windows minimizes that, and maximizes other values from using the
focus-follows-mouse.

>I like window border snapping (or resistance) for moving windows.
>That makes it easy to position two windows adjacent to each other.
>Of course, with Ion, windows are always adjacent (or they cover each
>other), so there is no problem there.

I've never used that.  But I rarely ever position two windows
side by side, as such.  My problem is that I have to have most
windows too large (the text has to be big enough for me to read
without eye strain) to put them side by side and have much room
in a window.  (This has been somewhat changed since I've gone to
using a dual head video setup with two monitors, as now I can
put two "fullsized" windows adjacent to each other!  But so far
that hasn't changed my normal way of working much, though given
time it probably will.)

>Still on the subject of moving windows, I found out that I normally
>move a window to be adjacent to another one, or the screen edge.  And
>some WMs have keybindings which will move a window in some direction
>until it bumps into another one.  Very useful.
>
>A related function I like is to grow a window in some direction until
>it bumps into another one.  That helps me fill empty areas on the
>desktop.
>
>Of course, I don't need these operations with Ion.  (I think there is
>an fvwm module which does like Ion does -- is it called tiling?)

All of the above sounds really interesting.  I'm going to have to
look at that.

>Back when I used ctwm, I used another feature instead.  Ctwm allows
>you to bind a key to a function which will move a window to a
>predetermined location and resize it to a predetermined size.  It
>turns out that all my xterms are either 80x25 or 80x(height of
>screen).  So I had some functions which moved an xterm to be 80x25 in
>the upper left corner, 80x25 in the upper right corner, then two more
>for the locations below these, and more functions for 80x(screen
>height) on the left and on the right.
>
>(I select my font such that an 80 column xterm is about half the
>screen width, or a bit less.)

I typically use a 100 column xterm that takes up about 75% of
the screen.  Until I went to two monitors it was sometimes very
annoying to want to use two side by side xterms.  My emacs
windows are about the same size.  (For Usenet though, I use an
emacs window that is about 95% of the screen.)

I do use 15 virtual desktops, and jump between them with
regularity.  (For example, I am still forced to use a dialup
connection, so any time I do something that invokes the World
Wide Wait, I'm like the proverbial couch potato with a remote
control, except I switch screens instead of channels... :-)

>KDE allows you to move a window interactively: hold down cursor-right
>until it has moved far enough.  That was a kludge for achieving what I
>wanted, but I could bear the pain for some months.
>
>So far with window movement, on to window selection.
>
>I like to use C-x b in Emacs.  Sawfish and Ion provide a similar
>function for windows.  It's even more like iswitchb because you can
>enter substrings, not only prefixes as with C-x b.
>
>I also like to use C-x <right> and C-x <left> (next-buffer and
>previous-buffeer), and indeed most window managers offer this function
>on Alt-Tab (and Alt-Shift-Tab).  But I really hate the WMs to steal
>Alt-Tab.  I want to use M-TAB for completion in Emacs.  This
>functionality should select windows in MRU order.

I don't use C-x b in emacs much.  I use C-x C-b, to get a menu,
a lot.  I also use the bury-buffer function, which I have bound
to C-x x (I'm not sure if that is a default binding or not).

I use FVWM's FvwmPager module to switch between virtual desktops,
either with the mouse or sometimes (not nearly as often) by using
Control Arrow keys (mine is a 1x15 matrix, so there is only up
and down).

>I also like to select windows from menus, but then I prefer to use
>vi-like bindings or Emacs-like bindings to navigate those menus.  Too
>many WMs (OpenBox included) make me use the cursor keys for navigating
>the menus :-(

I've never liked a menu for my screen windows.  I fixed up my
own version of such a menu for FVWM, and a right mouse button
click on the root screen displays it, but things like bash show
up as "BASH" at worst, and with the window title at best, and I
can't tell which title applies to whatever it is I want to work
with.

On the other hand, I use a 1x15 graphic page manager, which
shows me which virtual desktop I'm looking at, and can give me
at least some visual clues as to which one has what in it (not
much of a clue, but I can tell at least what the shape of the
windows in each desktop).  My main reference is that I
always do certain things in certain desktops.  For example I
read Usenet in the second one down from the top.  I have another
newsreader open in the top desktop, which I occasionally use for
odd things.  Similarly I have, in the bottom 4 desktops, 4
different browsers (each running as a different user).  The
first two are dedicated pretty much to specific things, and the
bottom two are used for whatever random web activity I might do
(google searches, for example).

>The Windows-style Start menu navigation is also quite nice: P selects
>the only item starting with P.  If there is more than one item
>starting with P, then P moves to the first one, and you can hit P
>again to move to the next one.  Then RET selects it.

That is a very fundamental difference in what we do with window
managers.  I start virtually *no* applications from a window manager,
either by menu or with icons.  I work in many different directories,
and anything started by the window manager thinks it is in the
home directory.  So I start almost everything from a command line.
The exceptions are tools that are not tied to any given working
directory (xmag, a couple local database programs, xcalc, my clock,
stuff like that).

>Some time ago, I used to have many windows, most of them xterms.  But
>then I discovered screen, and now I just have a few xterms, all
>attached to the same screen session.

For me screen is somewhat like having to shift through windows
with the cursor keys.  I don't like it.  I put different xterms
on different virtual desktops, and rather than rotate through
them, I jump directly to the one that I want, using the mouse to
select it.

>I also distribute my windows across workspaces.  This means that
>selecting a window via the C-x b like function has become less
>important -- often selecting a workspace and hitting Alt-TAB (or the
>keybinding I have instead) a few times will do just fine.
>
>But screen doesn't provide C-x b like functionality for its screen
>sessions :-(
>
>I also have some ideas about the looks.

This was interesting, as we share a lot of similar ideas here.

>I like it for the focused window to be visually distinct.  So I like
>it for the whole border of the window to change color when the window
>has focus.  Fvwm does this very nicely.  (The OpenBox theme I chose
>does not use left and right window borders at all, but the title bar
>and the bottom border do change color on focus.)

With FVWM, I use its facilities to the max.  The window that is in
focus has a light bluegreen colored border, and others turn to grey.
The title bar turns more bluish, but at about the same intensity,
when a mouse button selects the title bar.

>I also like the title bars to be quite small.  (That makes them more
>difficult to hit with the mouse, but thanks to the keyboard support I
>don't need to do that ;-)

Mine are as small as I can make them and still have readable
title, which I suspect means that for me they have to be about
twice as big, perhaps more, as you are using.  They are about
1/4" high.  (Anything that doesn't need borders or a title bar,
is configured not to have one though.)

>There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".  PWM is
>known for this feature.  It means that you can have two windows on top
>of each other and see the title bar of each of them, for easy
>selection of the window.  Here is an asciified screenshot:
>
>+-----+ +-----+
>| W1  | | W2  |
>+-----+--------------+
>|                    |
>| contents of W1     |
>|                    |
>+--------------------+
>
>W1 and W2 have the same size and position, such that W1 covers W2
>completely.  The title bars do not stretch across the whole window
>width.  That's how I can see W2's title bar, too.

Wow, that looks very useful.  With FVWM I just stack them up,
with a slight offset.  I can handle 3 easily, but more than 4
starts getting pretty difficult.  Part of what make 2 or 3 easy
is using the focus-follows-mouse, but that also leads to the
accidental switching too.  I physically place the mouse off to
the right side of my keyboard, which minimizes that.  It also
makes removing my hands from the keyboard necessary every time
I want to things that require mouse... so it is a compromise.

Of course now, with two monitors, I've got an awful lot of space
to work with.  For example an emacs window editing a TeX file on
one and ghostview looking at the results on the other.  I used
to have to switch between the windows to see that, and now they
are both relatively close to "full size" on the monitors.

(For anyone that hasn't tried it, using a dual head video system
under X is just astounding!)

...

>Of course, Ion has taken piles to the extreme.  (It calls a pile a
>frame, and frames have slightly different behavior, too.)

Useful information!  I'll have to take a look at that.

>Another feature I implemented for Sawfish and ctwm is automatic window
>lowering.  (Autoraise is normally used with focus follows mouse, and
...
>visible again.  I used to like this a lot, but now it's gotten
>somewhat old, and I switched to click-to-focus, as well.

That pretty much described what I do.

I also have FVWM set up to lower a window by using a right mouse click
on the title bar.  So if I lose something small under a large window,
I can get it without having to move the large window or find the small
one in a menu.

...
>Something that really surprises me is that I don't seem to need
>scriptability in a WM.  Sawfish groks Lisp, and so I scripted it a
>lot.  But if the functionality of the WM is right, then I don't need
>all that scripting.

It doesn't take much, and I don't reconfigure the WM very often, so
just how it is scripted isn't nearly as important as how well it is
documented!  I have to look it all up anyway...

>Given how I work with Emacs, I'm quite surprised about myself.  Can
>somebody explain my behavior to me? ;-)

Looks to me like you are willing to reconfigure just about
anything to suit your desired style, rather than adjust your
style to match the defaults.  I think that is typical of
programmers (particularly those who do systems programming or
administration) and not so likely with non-programmers.

>Another thing is the subwindow handling (where an application window
>contains several subwindows).
>
>I use buffers and windows in Emacs.  I use screen to manage my
>shells.  I use tabbed browsing with Firefox.  So this means that I've
>got to remember three different ways to select "subentities" in a
>program.  In Emacs, I use C-x <right> and C-x b to select between
>buffers.  In screen, I use C-a n and C-a p.  In Firefox I use
>Ctrl-Tab.  If I was using konsole (the KDE program) I'd use
>Shift-<right> to select between shell sessions.
>
>This really really really sucks.

That would drive me right up a tree.

>Why can't I have a central mechanism for doing this?  The central
>mechanism could be enhanced to be like iswitchb with substring
>matching and completion, and then Bob would be my uncle.  But, no, I
>have to live with different kinds of minimalistic functionality in
>different programs.  Argh.
>
>Whee.
>
>Long rant.
>
>Let me stop now.

Thanks.  It was worth reading a couple times, and thinking about
what you are saying.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

> On Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 37, 3170 YOLD, Leonardo Boiko wrote:
> 
> >> I use XKB though to switch my Caps Lock and left Ctrl key (like Sun
> >> keyboards have) -- this one I found in docs. ;) In Emacs it makes
> >> *big* difference.
> >
> > Who needs Caps Lock anyway? Instead of switching, I just bind it as 
> > another Control.  Then, if by reflex I use the old Control, it's still a 
> > Control.
> 
> Caps lock is sometimes useful.  E.G when typing SQL or Lisp code --
> I don't like to have to hold shift when typing keywords (well, maybe
> I could do Emacs tricks like `turn preceding n words to
> uppercase'... well... *click* C-h i g (emacs)...).  While both these
> languages are case-insensitive so I could just use lowercase, I prefer
> to stay consistent wrt style with code written by respective language
> gurus.

There are several solutions for this.

- map Caps Lock to some other key with xmodmap. For example, I map it
  to Scroll Lock which is not useful on X11..

- use caps-mode. You can even activate this minor mode from a hook of
  the major modes that need upcase.  It's even better than a true Caps
  Lock, because you keep typing lower-case, so emacs understands all
  the keys bindings. With Caps Lock, you're typing upper-case and key
  bindings don't match.
  (I found it on news:gnu.emacs.source a few months ago).

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Setting Orange, The Aftermath 38, 3170 YOLD, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

>> Caps lock is sometimes useful.  E.G when typing SQL or Lisp code --
>> I don't like to have to hold shift when typing keywords (well, maybe
>> I could do Emacs tricks like `turn preceding n words to
>> uppercase'... well... *click* C-h i g (emacs)...).  While both these
>> languages are case-insensitive so I could just use lowercase, I prefer
>> to stay consistent wrt style with code written by respective language
>> gurus.
>
> There are several solutions for this.
>
> - map Caps Lock to some other key with xmodmap. For example, I map it
>   to Scroll Lock which is not useful on X11..

Well, I got caps-lock mapped to what used to be left Ctrl (and vice
versa) with xkb option ctrl:swapcaps.  It's okay with me; OTOH
changing case backwards with M-- [n] M-u seems to be what I was
looking for (I knew M-u, M-l and M-c bot never thought of giving it
a prefix...).

> - use caps-mode. You can even activate this minor mode from a hook of
>   the major modes that need upcase.  It's even better than a true Caps
>   Lock, because you keep typing lower-case, so emacs understands all
>   the keys bindings. With Caps Lock, you're typing upper-case and key
>   bindings don't match.

It can also be good; I thought also about abbrevs (uppercasing known
keywords, especially for SQL) or some kind of electric space for Lisp
(though it'd be a bot too automagic for me) but M-- M-u seems to be
good way to go.

Greets,
		--japhy

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { ...you claimed all this time that you would die for me,
,|{-}|}| }\/ why then are you so surprised when you hear your own eulogy... }
\/   |____/                                             ( M. J. Keenan )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

> Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
> jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
> binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
> I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).

I use ` for screen, `` inserts a single ` character.  Works quite well.

> So I integrated shell with FVWM (current beta is at
> http://japhy.fnord.org/pub/ScreenTerm, when it'll get more mature
> I'll put it on my home page) so I can control my screen session as
> multi-terminal by window manager.  Just in case somebody found it
> useful.

Cool.  Gotta look at that.

I started a screen daemon and changed my WM config so that all xterms
attach to the same daemon.  This means that the list of shell sessions
and the number of xterms I've got are decoupled.  Very useful.  I can
just create an xterm on demand to look at a shell session, then close
the xterm and the shell is still there.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Setting Orange, The Aftermath 38, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:

>> Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
>> jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
>> binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
>> I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).
>
> I use ` for screen, `` inserts a single ` character.  Works quite well.

...except when you try to paste a shell script from
editor/browser/whatever.  Before I had ScreenTerm and could safely
disable hotkey I also used backtick but strange things happening when
pasting textwere annoying.

>> So I integrated shell with FVWM (current beta is at
>> http://japhy.fnord.org/pub/ScreenTerm, when it'll get more mature
>> I'll put it on my home page) so I can control my screen session as
>> multi-terminal by window manager.  Just in case somebody found it
>> useful.
>
> Cool.  Gotta look at that.

If you had any suggestions regarding keybindings (they're just
`prototype' ones, I use C-Menu (screen's colon command) for almost
everything) I'll be glad to hear them.

> I started a screen daemon and changed my WM config so that all xterms
> attach to the same daemon.  This means that the list of shell sessions
> and the number of xterms I've got are decoupled.  Very useful.  I can
> just create an xterm on demand to look at a shell session, then close
> the xterm and the shell is still there.

I prefer to run few screen sessions and have terminal windows
independent of each other.  Of course I can run the same session in
two windows but I like to have my net-related windows (irssi, ekg2,
SSH sessions, gnus-agent-batch) in one screen and `development' shells
(ones I temporarily use when programming) in second one, not
interfering with each other.  If I used single screen for everything
there'd be too much screen windows for me -- usually I use about 5
screen windows per session; more than 8-9 shells in one screen is just
confusing for me.

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { -It's possible that people in my life are actually detrimental
,|{-}|}| }\/ to what I'm trying to do right now--And what is it you're trying
\/   |____/ to do? -- I'm trying to stay sane. }         ( I Feel Sick )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Mike]

In article <mailman.1437.1101390082.27204.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>, Kai Grossjohann wrote:
> Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:
> 
>> Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
>> jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
>> binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
>> I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).
> 
> I use ` for screen, `` inserts a single ` character.  Works quite well.
> 
>> So I integrated shell with FVWM (current beta is at
>> http://japhy.fnord.org/pub/ScreenTerm, when it'll get more mature
>> I'll put it on my home page) so I can control my screen session as
>> multi-terminal by window manager.  Just in case somebody found it
>> useful.
> 
> Cool.  Gotta look at that.
> 
> I started a screen daemon and changed my WM config so that all xterms
> attach to the same daemon.  This means that the list of shell sessions
> and the number of xterms I've got are decoupled.  Very useful.  I can
> just create an xterm on demand to look at a shell session, then close
> the xterm and the shell is still there.
> 
> Kai
> 
> 
> 
> 

I remapped screen to C-t.

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Setting Orange, The Aftermath 38, 3170 YOLD, mikee@mikee.ath.cx wrote:

> I remapped screen to C-t.

That's transpose-chars. ;)  I occasionally use it, even in shell, but
it seems to be most harmless binding at the moment.  Thanks.

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  /   {    Ibi nullus timet mortem
,|{-}|}| }\/                         sed pro Baccho mittunt sortem.   }
\/   |____/                                           ( Carmina Burana )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Mathias Dahl]

Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

> > Who needs Caps Lock anyway? Instead of switching, I just bind it as 
> > another Control.  Then, if by reflex I use the old Control, it's still a 
> > Control.
> 
> Caps lock is sometimes useful.  E.G when typing SQL or Lisp code --
> I don't like to have to hold shift when typing keywords (well, maybe
> I could do Emacs tricks like `turn preceding n words to
> uppercase'... well... *click* C-h i g (emacs)...).  

One of the SQL-modes for Emacs uses abbrevs to change
keywords in SQL to uppercase. Don't remember which one it
was but if you do not have it, you could define such abbrevs
yourself, like making select => SELECT etc.

/Mathias

Re: emacs for everything?

[Stefan Monnier]

> keywords, especially for SQL) or some kind of electric space for Lisp

For Lisp I'd recommend to use lowercase.  It's more legible.


        Stefan

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Setting Orange, The Aftermath 38, 3170 YOLD, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> keywords, especially for SQL) or some kind of electric space for Lisp
>
> For Lisp I'd recommend to use lowercase.  It's more legible.

Code in tutorials and code printed by Lisp printer has uppercase
symbols.  It's more natural for me to write lowercase but I found
a convention to write symbols that come from Common Lisp (i.e. not
defined by me) in uppercase.  It seems to be logical but OTOH I'm
a Lisp newbie; I just try to follow conventions.  If it's acceptable
to use lowercase I'll use it, maybe after some googling on conventions
used by people. :)  Thanks for the tip.

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { ...don't just call me pessimist, try and read between the
,|{-}|}| }\/ lines, I can't imagine why you wouldn't welcome any change my
\/   |____/ friend, I wanna see it all come down... }   ( M. J. Keenan )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[William Xuuu]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> I simply do not understand the sanity in what you have
> described!  That is a straight jacket!
>
> Except I'll grant that fonts in X are a problem.  I've spent

This is one of the key reason that i'm sticking to console. ;-)

> hours and hours finding fonts (for any given screen resolution)
> that provide a nice, readable screen under both (x)emacs and in
> an xterm.  But it is *definitely* worth it.
>
> The "black background, good for eyes" comment is correct, but
> misplaced.  Under X I use goldenrod2 as the foreground color
> along with black for the background, and it is much like the old
> "amber" monochrome monitors of years ago.  Which is to say, even
> better than white on black, for the eyes!
>
> But what you are missing by using a console is the extreme
> versatility provided by a good window manager under X.  Your
> message headers indicate that you are using Linux, which means
> you have to switch between a console and X with a rather clunky

Yeah, i admit it a weakness. Not a big deal, though. Most of the time i'm
under console.

> mechanism, and have extremely limited use of screen space when
> in the console.  What I do, using fvwm2 as a window manager, is
> set up a desktop manager with a 1x15 matrix of virtual desktops.

You are so smart to master 15 desktops! I know fvwm supports multiple
virtual desktops. But I only use one desktop.

> The desktop manager is on the left side of the screen, and is
> sticky.  Hence I need about 1/8 inch of the left side to be
> clear in order to use it with a mouse (and none of it needs to
> be clear to use the keyboard to switch desktops).

I hate that. I'd love Emacs to occupy the whole screen. And i don't like to
use mouse.

> At this moment I have 4 web (opera) browsers open in four
> different desktops (all as different users).  I have at least a
> dozen instances of an xterm running in various windows.  At a
> glance I can see which desktop I am in, and with the click of a
> mouse I can move to a different one, or I can use control-arrow
> keys to scroll up or down through the list.  (If at any time I
> want a window in any desktop moved to the same desktop as
> another window, that is an almost instant operation requiring
> about three clicks of the mouse to do.)
>
> Consider the effort that you have to go through on a console if
> you want to switch to a web browser.  I can select any of four
> of them with a single mouse click.  And I could have them all
> stacked up in the same desktop in short order too, which simply
> cannot be done on a console.

If i don't care the pictures, w3m is pretty good for me. BTW, why don't you
use tabs in web browsing?

-- 
William Xuuu

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

> On Setting Orange, The Aftermath 38, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:
>
>>> Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
>>> jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
>>> binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
>>> I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).
>>
>> I use ` for screen, `` inserts a single ` character.  Works quite well.
>
> ...except when you try to paste a shell script from
> editor/browser/whatever.  Before I had ScreenTerm and could safely
> disable hotkey I also used backtick but strange things happening when
> pasting textwere annoying.

Yeah.  A friend uses C-o, perhaps that's better.  In a shell, you
don't use C-o that often, and for the few times, C-o o is good enough,
I think.

>> I started a screen daemon and changed my WM config so that all xterms
>> attach to the same daemon.  This means that the list of shell sessions
>> and the number of xterms I've got are decoupled.  Very useful.  I can
>> just create an xterm on demand to look at a shell session, then close
>> the xterm and the shell is still there.
>
> I prefer to run few screen sessions and have terminal windows
> independent of each other.  Of course I can run the same session in
> two windows but I like to have my net-related windows (irssi, ekg2,
> SSH sessions, gnus-agent-batch) in one screen and `development' shells
> (ones I temporarily use when programming) in second one, not
> interfering with each other.  If I used single screen for everything
> there'd be too much screen windows for me -- usually I use about 5
> screen windows per session; more than 8-9 shells in one screen is just
> confusing for me.

What's missing for screen is the equivalent of C-x b or iswitchb.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 39, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:

>>>> Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
>>>> jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
>>>> binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
>>>> I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).
>>>
>>> I use ` for screen, `` inserts a single ` character.  Works quite well.
>>
>> ...except when you try to paste a shell script from
>> editor/browser/whatever.  Before I had ScreenTerm and could safely
>> disable hotkey I also used backtick but strange things happening when
>> pasting textwere annoying.
>
> Yeah.  A friend uses C-o, perhaps that's better.  In a shell, you
> don't use C-o that often, and for the few times, C-o o is good enough,
> I think.

Oh!  This one seems to be a good pick. :)  Thanks.

> What's missing for screen is the equivalent of C-x b or iswitchb.

What's wrong with <hotkey> l (windowlist)?  I rarely use more than
eight windows so I don't need sophisticated methods to choose...

And I have caption line with window list on it, it takes two terminal
lines (or jus one if you don't use hardstatus) but is really
convenient (especially with windows monitored for activity/silence):

caption always
caption string '%{cb}%?%F*%:.%? %-Lw%{bc}%n*%f %t%{-}%+Lw %{= dd} %=%{.g}%H %l'
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= .c}%h%=%{.g}%D %M %d %Y %c:%s'

Maybe I shoud move window list to hardstatus, with split screen window
it looks weird... OTOH, I don't use split windows that much...

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { ...bibit puer, bibit canus, bibit presul et decanus,
,|{-}|}| }\/ bibit soror, bibit frater, bibit anus, bibit mater, bibit ista,
\/   |____/bibit ille, bibunt centum, bibunt mille. } ( Carmina Burana )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

> On Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 39, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:
>
>> What's missing for screen is the equivalent of C-x b or iswitchb.
>
> What's wrong with <hotkey> l (windowlist)?  I rarely use more than
> eight windows so I don't need sophisticated methods to choose...

Well, you use multiple separate screen instances, I think.

But for the use case where you have one screen containing all sessions
(with multiple xterms attached via "screen -x"), you'll get many
sessions.  Something that's useful is to give them names that say
something about the purpose.

It seems to be natural for me to type C-o b frumple RET, say, to
switch to the screen session where I logged in on frumple.  Or C-o b
root@frumple RET for the root session on frumple.

The problem with windowlist is that you can select a window by number,
or by moving up and down.  But if you know the window title already,
you first have to look up its name.

The friend who uses C-o as the escape key in screen also has a script
which sets up the screen sessions he needs, in the order he needs.
Then he can select screen sessions by number, for he knows which
number does root@localhost have, and so on.

But that's not my usage pattern.  I create sessions on demand, and
then the number is not predictable.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>
>>The Windows-style Start menu navigation is also quite nice: P selects
>>the only item starting with P.  If there is more than one item
>>starting with P, then P moves to the first one, and you can hit P
>>again to move to the next one.  Then RET selects it.
>
> That is a very fundamental difference in what we do with window
> managers.  I start virtually *no* applications from a window manager,
> either by menu or with icons.  I work in many different directories,
> and anything started by the window manager thinks it is in the
> home directory.  So I start almost everything from a command line.
> The exceptions are tools that are not tied to any given working
> directory (xmag, a couple local database programs, xcalc, my clock,
> stuff like that).

There's a misunderstanding, here.  I was only referring to the way how
you can select items from the Windows Start menu using the keyboard.

I didn't mean that the Window Start menu, per se, is useful.

But the menu navigation could be used for any menu, such as for the
list of windows, or for the window operations (you know, iconify,
maximize, resize, ...), or you name it.


Please note that the Windows Start menu navigation is different from
the way other Windows menus are navigated.  In the other menus, each
item has an underlined character which serves as the accelerator.  But
the Windows Start menu provides for two items having the same
accelerator, and it does not require explicit specification of the
accelerator (it's always the first character).

>>There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".[...]
>
> Wow, that looks very useful.

Perhaps fvwm has a module for this?

... surfs fvwm.org ...

No, I couldn't find anything.  Hm.  But I think I heard something
about it.  Hm.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> keywords, especially for SQL) or some kind of electric space for Lisp
>> For Lisp I'd recommend to use lowercase.  It's more legible.
> Code in tutorials and code printed by Lisp printer has uppercase
> symbols.  It's more natural for me to write lowercase but I found
> a convention to write symbols that come from Common Lisp (i.e. not
> defined by me) in uppercase.

It was done in the past.  Nowadays, Common Lisp code uses lowercase mostly.

> It seems to be logical but OTOH I'm a Lisp newbie;

Allcaps only makes sense when you don't have a choice: it's much more
difficult to read (your brain has a lot more trouble making out the words).


        Stefan

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>>
>>>The Windows-style Start menu navigation is also quite nice: P selects
>>>the only item starting with P.  If there is more than one item
>>>starting with P, then P moves to the first one, and you can hit P
>>>again to move to the next one.  Then RET selects it.
>>
>> That is a very fundamental difference in what we do with window
>> managers.  I start virtually *no* applications from a window manager,
>> either by menu or with icons.  I work in many different directories,
>> and anything started by the window manager thinks it is in the
>> home directory.  So I start almost everything from a command line.
>> The exceptions are tools that are not tied to any given working
>> directory (xmag, a couple local database programs, xcalc, my clock,
>> stuff like that).
>
>There's a misunderstanding, here.  I was only referring to the way how
>you can select items from the Windows Start menu using the keyboard.
>
>I didn't mean that the Window Start menu, per se, is useful.

Hee hee, okay...  I did assume you were actually using a Start menu.

>But the menu navigation could be used for any menu, such as for the
>list of windows, or for the window operations (you know, iconify,
>maximize, resize, ...), or you name it.
>
>Please note that the Windows Start menu navigation is different from
>the way other Windows menus are navigated.  In the other menus, each
>item has an underlined character which serves as the accelerator.  But
>the Windows Start menu provides for two items having the same
>accelerator, and it does not require explicit specification of the
>accelerator (it's always the first character).

I use menus so little that the accelerators have never been of much
interest to me.

I basically put things in menus that I won't otherwise remember,
and if it is in a menu, I just use the mouse to access it.

Many of the menu items I have are somewhat obscure functions
that, for example, I might only use ever several months.  One
effect of that is not only do I not remember or use the
accelerator, I can't even remember a name.  So my menu needs to
be as descriptive as I can make it and trying to pick a name
that makes for a good accelerator is not important.  I've just
decided to totally ignore such things as accelerators, and use
the mouse only for menus.

Hence I'd never noticed the difference you are describing.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Micha Feigin]

At Sat, 27 Nov 2004 21:07:13 +0100,
Kai Grossjohann wrote:
> 
> floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
> 
> > Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
> >
> >>The Windows-style Start menu navigation is also quite nice: P selects
> >>the only item starting with P.  If there is more than one item
> >>starting with P, then P moves to the first one, and you can hit P
> >>again to move to the next one.  Then RET selects it.
> >
> > That is a very fundamental difference in what we do with window
> > managers.  I start virtually *no* applications from a window manager,
> > either by menu or with icons.  I work in many different directories,
> > and anything started by the window manager thinks it is in the
> > home directory.  So I start almost everything from a command line.
> > The exceptions are tools that are not tied to any given working
> > directory (xmag, a couple local database programs, xcalc, my clock,
> > stuff like that).
> 
> There's a misunderstanding, here.  I was only referring to the way how
> you can select items from the Windows Start menu using the keyboard.
> 
> I didn't mean that the Window Start menu, per se, is useful.
> 
> But the menu navigation could be used for any menu, such as for the
> list of windows, or for the window operations (you know, iconify,
> maximize, resize, ...), or you name it.
> 
> 
> Please note that the Windows Start menu navigation is different from
> the way other Windows menus are navigated.  In the other menus, each
> item has an underlined character which serves as the accelerator.  But
> the Windows Start menu provides for two items having the same
> accelerator, and it does not require explicit specification of the
> accelerator (it's always the first character).
> 
> >>There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".[...]
> >
> > Wow, that looks very useful.
> 
> Perhaps fvwm has a module for this?
> 
> ... surfs fvwm.org ...
> 
> No, I couldn't find anything.  Hm.  But I think I heard something
> about it.  Hm.
> 

You are probably talking about fvwmtabs
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/scottie7/fvwmtabs.html

> Kai
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Help-gnu-emacs mailing list
> Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
>  
>  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
>  at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
> 

Re: emacs for everything?

[Daniel Pittman]

On 28 Nov 2004, Maciek Pasternacki wrote:
> On Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 39, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:
>
>>>>> Also, I don't like screen(1) eating my C-a which I use frequently to
>>>>> jump to beginning of line in shell.  After thinking about other
>>>>> binding to use, I realised that I use virtually every binding (since
>>>>> I learned Emacs I use the same bindings in shell).
>>>>
>>>> I use ` for screen, `` inserts a single ` character. Works quite well.
>>>
>>> ...except when you try to paste a shell script from
>>> editor/browser/whatever.  Before I had ScreenTerm and could safely
>>> disable hotkey I also used backtick but strange things happening when
>>> pasting textwere annoying.
>>
>> Yeah.  A friend uses C-o, perhaps that's better.  In a shell, you
>> don't use C-o that often, and for the few times, C-o o is good enough,
>> I think.

To duck in here briefly, after *long* consideration, I ended up with my
screen(1) control key on 'C-]', with 'C-] C-]' generating the actual
sequence.

The logic:  I don't use `abort-recursive-edit' very often at all, and
the only other common tool using that key sequence at all is telnet(1).

    Daniel
-- 
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but
in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
        -- H. L. Mencken

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Boomtime, The Aftermath 40, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:

>>> What's missing for screen is the equivalent of C-x b or iswitchb.
>>
>> What's wrong with <hotkey> l (windowlist)?  I rarely use more than
>> eight windows so I don't need sophisticated methods to choose...
>
> Well, you use multiple separate screen instances, I think.
>
> But for the use case where you have one screen containing all sessions
> (with multiple xterms attached via "screen -x"), you'll get many
> sessions.  Something that's useful is to give them names that say
> something about the purpose.

<hotkey> : title <title> RET

> It seems to be natural for me to type C-o b frumple RET, say, to
> switch to the screen session where I logged in on frumple.  Or C-o b
> root@frumple RET for the root session on frumple.

<hotkey> ' <title> RET (select)
<hotkey> " (windowlist)

> But that's not my usage pattern.  I create sessions on demand, and
> then the number is not predictable.

You can create sessions with screen -t (either from shell-under-screen
(`screen' command in shell under screen sees $STY environment variable
and knows where it is) or from <hotkey> : command line), you can give
title to a session with <hotkey> : title.

Greets,
		--japhy

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { I tell you this, no eternal reward will forgive us now
,|{-}|}| }\/                                           for wasting the dawn! }
\/   |____/                                             ( Jim Morrison )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Boomtime, The Aftermath 40, 3170 YOLD, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>>>> keywords, especially for SQL) or some kind of electric space for Lisp
>>> For Lisp I'd recommend to use lowercase.  It's more legible.
>> Code in tutorials and code printed by Lisp printer has uppercase
>> symbols.  It's more natural for me to write lowercase but I found
>> a convention to write symbols that come from Common Lisp (i.e. not
>> defined by me) in uppercase.
>
> It was done in the past.  Nowadays, Common Lisp code uses lowercase mostly.

OK, thanks for clearing this out.

>> It seems to be logical but OTOH I'm a Lisp newbie;
>
> Allcaps only makes sense when you don't have a choice: it's much more
> difficult to read (your brain has a lot more trouble making out the words).

Well, it makes SQL actually easier to read for me.  Anyway it's cool
I don't need to write Lisp in uppercase. :)

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { ...a good traveller has no fixed plans,
,|{-}|}| }\/                             and is not intent on arriving... }
\/   |____/                                                  ( Lao Tzu )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Boomtime, The Aftermath 40, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:

>>>There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".[...]
>>
>> Wow, that looks very useful.
>
> Perhaps fvwm has a module for this?
>
> ... surfs fvwm.org ...
>
> No, I couldn't find anything.  Hm.  But I think I heard something
> about it.  Hm.

There was something, implemented as FvwmPerl script, but I couldn't
get it to work with fvwm-2.5.10.  I don't remember name now but it had
something with tabs...

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite;
,|{-}|}| }\/         quod per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!   }
\/   |____/                                           ( Carmina Burana )  -><-

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

> On Boomtime, The Aftermath 40, 3170 YOLD, Kai Grossjohann wrote:
>
>> It seems to be natural for me to type C-o b frumple RET, say, to
>> switch to the screen session where I logged in on frumple.  Or C-o b
>> root@frumple RET for the root session on frumple.
>
> <hotkey> ' <title> RET (select)

I didn't know about this function.  It's useful.  But it doesn't
support completion (at least not with tab).  That makes it much less
useful.

Thanks,
Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Micha Feigin <michf@post.tau.ac.il> wrote:
>Kai Grossjohann wrote:
>> floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>> > Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>>
>> >>There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".[...]
>> >
>> > Wow, that looks very useful.
>>
>> Perhaps fvwm has a module for this?
>>
>> ... surfs fvwm.org ...
>>
>> No, I couldn't find anything.  Hm.  But I think I heard something
>> about it.  Hm.
>>
>
>You are probably talking about fvwmtabs
>http://users.tpg.com.au/users/scottie7/fvwmtabs.html

After looking at that web page, I'll admit that I just don't see
much value in what it does compared to using the FvwmPager module
with simply a large number of virtual desktops.

For one, the pager window is not tied to any other window, but
is placed where ever you like it on the screen (and in theory
can be move whenever you wish, though I don't use it that way).

The pager window of course has an entirely different type of
system to cue the user about what is available.  The two systems
perhaps use different means to access tabs or desktops, but I
don't see that as significant.  What they index, however, is
very different and I find that very significant.

I didn't look into exactly how the tab system decides what label
to apply in each tab.  Hopefully it is something useful, though
in fact I have yet to see one that is for me.  I don't relate
short names (or icons) to what a program is being used for.  In
particular I may have several similar projects going, all of
which use some of the same programs.  Hence just a program name
is no clue at all to which tab I might be interested in.

The pager doesn't have labels at all though!  It does provide
some slight clue with a graphic representation of the physical
size of the windows open on each desktop.  But essentially it
requires that the user remember the physical position of a
virtual desktop in relation to the project on that desktop.

I can see where either of those two systems might be of more or
less use to different people with different styles.  For me the
window tabs are not useful, and the pager is very useful.

But aside from that aspect, the tab system is just too
restricted.  I don't want to switch between projects on the same
screen or worse yet the same window.

I very much like having a desktop with multiple programs running
in multiple windows, each positioned in on the screen in
whatever way works best for the immediate task at hand (which
might be very different, even for the same project, from day to
day or even for a few minutes for one particular task).

When I switch to some other project, I don't want to upset the
layout for the one I'm leaving.  And rarely ever does any
project take up a fullscreen window all by itself, as opposed to
having several windows (some of which might, such as emacs, have
the ability to multiplex various displays too).  Which is to say
that sometimes the tabbed window would be useful, but that would
not be often, and would never replace using virtual desktops and the
FvwmPager to manage them.

I suspect that the smaller the actual physical size of the screen
being used, the more useful window tabs would be.  If I used a
laptop a lot that might be *very* nice.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Lee Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Maciek" == Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> writes:

    Maciek> Caps lock is sometimes useful.  E.G when typing SQL or
    Maciek> Lisp code -- I don't like to have to hold shift when
    Maciek> typing keywords (well, maybe I could do Emacs tricks like
    Maciek> `turn preceding n words to uppercase'... well... *click*
    Maciek> C-h i g (emacs)...).

Check what C-x C-u and C-x C-l do.  :)


    Maciek> While both these languages are case-insensitive so I could
    Maciek> just use lowercase, I  prefer to stay consistent wrt style
    Maciek> with code written by respective language gurus.

Couldn't  the case  conversion  be done  automatically  on saving  and
loading by means of defining a coding system?


-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦                          ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Hansen]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 21:07:13 +0100 Kai Grossjohann wrote:

> floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>
>>>There is a feature sometimes called "window tabs", or "piles".[...]
>>
>> Wow, that looks very useful.
>
> Perhaps fvwm has a module for this?
>
> ... surfs fvwm.org ...
>
> No, I couldn't find anything.  Hm.  But I think I heard something
> about it.  Hm.

http://users.tpg.com.au/users/scottie7/fvwmtabs.html

You need fvwm from CVS (IMHO pretty stable) to use it.  BTW if
you like Ion but don't like the way it handles transient windows,
i can suggest wmi: http://wmi.modprobe.de/

-- David

Re: emacs for everything?

[Joe Corneli]

Shamelessly capitalizing on this popular thread with an on-topic
post...

Ironically, for people who _just use emacs_, this isn't really
relevant.

For everyone else: A while ago, I brought up the idea of setting up
Emacs as a filter sitting between you and your applications.  This
should enable scripting of pretty much any user interaction.  I also
was curious about the possibilities for using Emacs functions (like
search, copy) inside of other X applications (e.g. a graphical
webbrowser).

This seems like a good place to bring these ideas up again, with one
additional piece of information.  The program Xnee seems like it could
be wrapped or repackaged in Emacs to facilitate full-blown scripting.

Making the text and other UI components of all windows accessible to
Emacs would seem to require some fundamental changes to a lot of
programs or to X or both. :(

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> After looking at that web page, I'll admit that I just don't see
> much value in what it does compared to using the FvwmPager module
> with simply a large number of virtual desktops.

Hm.  This seems to be very difficult to answer, since desktops and
tabbed windows are so different.

Most of the time, my screen layout consists of a full-height window in
the left hald of the screen and another full-height window in the
right half.  In this setup, I could put an FvwmTabs window on the left
and another FvwmTabs window on the right, and then I could put
multiple xterms into each, and then I'd be able to choose which xterm
to see on the left and which xterm to see on the right.

This is not possible with virtual desktops.

> I didn't look into exactly how the tab system decides what label
> to apply in each tab.  Hopefully it is something useful, though
> in fact I have yet to see one that is for me.  I don't relate
> short names (or icons) to what a program is being used for.  In
> particular I may have several similar projects going, all of
> which use some of the same programs.  Hence just a program name
> is no clue at all to which tab I might be interested in.

You could make one FvwmTabs window for each project.  Then you
automatically know which project each program belongs to, since you
know which tab it is in.

(That would be similar to placing the relevant windows on the same
desktop.)

> But aside from that aspect, the tab system is just too
> restricted.  I don't want to switch between projects on the same
> screen or worse yet the same window.

Well, you get the tabs in addition to virtual desktops, so you only
gain features, you don't lose any.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> After looking at that web page, I'll admit that I just don't see
>> much value in what it does compared to using the FvwmPager module
>> with simply a large number of virtual desktops.
>
>Hm.  This seems to be very difficult to answer, since desktops and
>tabbed windows are so different.
>
>Most of the time, my screen layout consists of a full-height window in
>the left hald of the screen and another full-height window in the
>right half.  In this setup, I could put an FvwmTabs window on the left
>and another FvwmTabs window on the right, and then I could put
>multiple xterms into each, and then I'd be able to choose which xterm
>to see on the left and which xterm to see on the right.
>
>This is not possible with virtual desktops.

As such yes, but what virtual desktops allow you to do is exactly
that several times.

If all of those xterms in both of those windows are used in one
project, then that is useful.

If the reason for having multiple xterms in each window is that
the xterms have different projects in them, then it is much more
versatile to put them into an entirely different virtual
desktop.

But back to where they are all one project...  In my case I
rarely ever just line two windows up one directly next to the other,
because I either end up with too few characters per line in each
window, or if the columns are wide enough I have to use a font
that is too small for me to read.  I just don't have the eyes to
do what you are doing.  At least not on a 17" monitor.  And my
entire style of usage has been developed on a 17" monitor.  Now
that I'm using a dual head video card and have two 17" monitors,
I am slowly getting used to doing things that way though, and
now, when it is handy, I'm stacking two nearly full screen windows
side by side.  (I'm also eyeballing 17" LCD screens that have more
viewing space... :-)

Probably because of the way I've been doing things, my habits
rarely ever end up with more than 4 or 5 windows open on one
desk top, and usually only 3.  I just offset them slightly, both
vertically and horizontally, so that it is easy to move the
mouse to a new one (and since I use focus-follows-mouse, that is
quick and easy).

I sounded to me as if you are stacking all of your various
projects into two windows, and then using the tabs to select
which project's windows are the two displayed.  I don't see that
as anything near as versatile as putting each set of windows
onto a virtual desktop.  And I need a larger window size anyway.

>> I didn't look into exactly how the tab system decides what label
>> to apply in each tab.  Hopefully it is something useful, though
>> in fact I have yet to see one that is for me.  I don't relate
>> short names (or icons) to what a program is being used for.  In
>> particular I may have several similar projects going, all of
>> which use some of the same programs.  Hence just a program name
>> is no clue at all to which tab I might be interested in.
>
>You could make one FvwmTabs window for each project.  Then you
>automatically know which project each program belongs to, since you
>know which tab it is in.

But then you can only look at one of them at a time.  I don't
line them up next to each other as such, but I sure to offset
them to be able to view some parts of different windows, and
sometimes I'm interested in looking at more than 2, or even 3.
And which ones I want visible at the same time varies too.  It's
just too restrictive if I can't move the various xterms or emacs
windows around in relation to each other.

>(That would be similar to placing the relevant windows on the same
>desktop.)

But it would be the same as using everything fullscreen on the
desktop too, and I've always found that too restricting too.

>> But aside from that aspect, the tab system is just too
>> restricted.  I don't want to switch between projects on the same
>> screen or worse yet the same window.
>
>Well, you get the tabs in addition to virtual desktops, so you only
>gain features, you don't lose any.

And that is *very* true.  Adding it certainly doesn't stop me
from doing exactly what I am now, it just adds one more way to
keep track of multiple windows on one desktop.  And without
trying it I really can't say just how useful it is.  Given the
significant differences in the style you use and the style I
use, some part of it that you haven't mentioned, because it just
doesn't do you any good at all, might happen to be useful to
me...  Hence I'm definitely going to give it a try and see what
develops.

Regardless of tabs though, I find the discussion of different
ways to approach screen management are very useful as a way to
develop new ideas.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[ken]

Maciek Pasternacki wrote:

>> I use XKB though to switch my Caps Lock and left Ctrl key (like Sun
>> keyboards have) -- this one I found in docs. ;) In Emacs it makes
>> *big* difference.
>

Couple-three options:

First, "man xmodmap".

Or... on systems where I'm the only user, I doctor the default keymap in 
/lib/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/ and call it ctrlcaps.kmap.gz, then put

KEYTABLE="ctrlcaps"

in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard.  This is on RH9, so you might not have the 
same configuration system.  In that case, have a look at 
/etc/rc.d/init.d/ (or your equivalent), find the "keytable" file (or 
whatever does the same on your system, and doctor that to load ctrlcaps 
instead of the one it is currently loading.

Of... if you're using the new gnome WM, there's a GUI configuration app 
for swapping Ctrl and CapsLock keys.  This method works great... 
perfectly... in fact, too easily.  But I haven't gotten around to 
finding a more difficult way to do the same thing, so there's another 
thing to talk about with my therapist.  :)

hth,
ken

-- 
Reality is complicated.
Bush is simple.

dual head video system (was Re: emacs for everything?)

[ken]

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

>(For anyone that hasn't tried it, using a dual head video system
>under X is just astounding!)
>  
>
That tasty morsel has had me salivating for a long time.  How do you do 
it?  Is there a webpage or two which is/are particularly helpful?

Thanks (but sorry for the OTy),

ken

-- 
Reality is complicated.
Bush is simple.

Re: dual head video system

[Floyd L. Davidson]

ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
>
>>(For anyone that hasn't tried it, using a dual head video system
>>under X is just astounding!)
>>
>>
>That tasty morsel has had me salivating for a long time.  How do
>you do it?  Is there a webpage or two which is/are particularly
>helpful?

Start by using google to find this Message-ID
87isb4afo3.fld@barrow.com, which is a description of XFree86
configuration that was posted to comp.os.linux.x last August.

Then search the web and Usenet archives for "xinerama" and
you'll find more about the mechanism.  If you have one
particular video card in mind, add a keyword for that too.

Basically it requires either two video cards or a video card
that supports dual monitors.  Neither the cards nor the monitors
need to be identical.  A number of inexpensive video cards
support dual monitors, so it does not require high end hardware.

I fired up one box using an old PII-300mHz and two old video
cards with 4K of RAM each, plus two 15" 1024x768 monitors that I
picked up at a local "surplus sale" for $10 each.  It is a
Point-Of-Sale system now...  In fact, that project was what got
me to try it, as I bought the old PII box with a 17" monitor for
peanuts just for the POS system.  But when I saw xinerama in
operation, that 17" monitor was quickly relocated to my work
position, as the existing workstation already had a G400 Matrox
video card.

But what it does is what you really want to know about... :-)

The two monitors can be totally separate, or they can be
combined as if they are one big screen.  They can also be at
different resolutions, though that gets strange if they are
combined.  With a combined screen, the second monitor's screen
can be positioned anywhere relative to the first.  They can be
stacked vertically or horizontally, with position 0,0 being
either the top, bottom, right or left monitor.

The only limitations that I discovered were having to use
builtin VESA modelines as I could not get mine to work with a
custom screen resolution, plus if your X server is configured to
switch between screen resolutions, only the first screen can be
switched.  One external problem is that so far not many programs
are xinerama aware, so such things as popup windows from your
web browser might just land smack in the middle of the extended
screen...  half on one monitor and half on the other. That's a
bummer, but not hard to ignore.  Eventually we can expect all
programs to check for dual monitors and adjust appropriately.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Regardless of tabs though, I find the discussion of different
> ways to approach screen management are very useful as a way to
> develop new ideas.

That is highly true!

You suggested to use more workspaces.  I tend to restrict myself to
fewer workspaces, each of them with a predefined role.  One workspace
is for communication (contains an Emacs instance dedicated to Gnus
plus Gaim plus an xterm for miscellaneous stuff), another is for doing
sw development (contains my other Emacs instance and an xterm, another
is for browsing the web (contains Firefox and Acroread and
OpenOffice -- OOo isn't used for browsing the web but I didn't know
where else to put it), and a couple of others are for in-house
applications I use, one app per workspace.  (These apps aren't usable
in anything but fullscreen mode.)

So basically my division of workspaces goes by program type, not by
project.

It could be quite useful to use workspaces according to project.  (For
the right value of "project" ;-)

Hm.  At one point, I did use one of my spare workspaces for a specific
task: for testing a web application.  So I created another Firefox
window and an xterm, tail -f'd the right logfile in the xterm, and
clicked away in Firefox to see what would happen.  That was a good
experience.  However, I can't seem to get myself to using workspaces
that way.

Do you allocate workspaces dynamically, or are they more or less
static?  That is, do you always have the same set of projects and do
you always know which project will be in which workspace?  Or do you
use the same workspace for one project today and for another tomorrow?


Hm.  Ion supports the dynamic workspace allocation well: it allows you
to enter a name, then it creates a workspace by that name.  And you
can select a workspace by name.  This means that if you always use the
project name as workspace name, then it doesn't matter which set of
projects you happen to work on today.

Kai

Re: emacs for everything?

[Kevin Rodgers]

Leonardo Boiko wrote:
 > C-u - n M-u, where "n" is a digit (or nothing for upcasing just the last
 > word). M-u, M-l and M-c rocks.

`M--' is even easier to type than `C-u -', especially when followed by
another Meta-key.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>It could be quite useful to use workspaces according to project.  (For
>the right value of "project" ;-)

I'm thinking this also depends on characteristics that I had not
accounted for before, which might be very different for
different users.  I am retired, and what I'm describing exists
on a workstation which is rarely ever rebooted and where I am
*always* logged in.  Physical security is absolute (and external
to the computer), so I have no need to ever log out.

In a work environment, where even so much as walking down the
hall for a breath of air means logging out, would not want to
use the same configuration.

And of course there may be an infinite variety in between those
extremes.

>Hm.  At one point, I did use one of my spare workspaces for a specific
>task: for testing a web application.  So I created another Firefox
>window and an xterm, tail -f'd the right logfile in the xterm, and
>clicked away in Firefox to see what would happen.  That was a good
>experience.  However, I can't seem to get myself to using workspaces
>that way.
>
>Do you allocate workspaces dynamically, or are they more or less
>static?  That is, do you always have the same set of projects and do
>you always know which project will be in which workspace?  Or do you
>use the same workspace for one project today and for another tomorrow?

Technically it is about 50-50 between dynamic and static, but
the effect is just about the same as if it were totally static.
First, my FvwmPager window is set up in a 1x15 vertical matrix,
which can sit on the left side of a screen, and is adjusted in
size so that it is about 5/8" wide (on the one that is used for
the dual monitors, where it is on the right side screen and is
therefore in the middle of the entire display area), and just
less than 1/2" per desktop in height.  (The whole Pager window
is an inch or so short of the full vertical height of the
screen.)

That provides me with a single vertical position as the "identity" by
which I think of each virtual desktop.

Here is a snapshot of the entire (dual) screen layout:

  http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson/misc/root.gif

What happens to be in each window is fairly well set, and is
more historical than anything else.  The top window has a
"scratch" pair of xterms with a bash command line.  The next
three are pretty much assigned to specific things.  The next 4
get fairly random selection for whatever I am doing at the
moment, though that is still pretty much divided up too, as the
lower two of those are almost certainly going to have xterms
logged into other hosts on my local network.

Then there are two desktops that rarely ever get used, followed
by 5 that have specific things done (all of them are related to
web browsing, and there are 4 with opera running under different
user names).

So out of 15, two rarely ever get used, and only four of the
desktops change very often. And my mental cue as to where
something is relates the vertical position with different types
of work.  I simply do not commit to memory anything about where
I'm at when working, even when an interuption moves me to a
different desktop.  The pattern is all I need to know, not the
specifics.  If I select the wrong desktop, moving the mouse half
and inch and clicking again gets me the right one.

But... One problem with this is that if I do log out, when I log
back in the process of setting it all up again to be exactly
where I left off, is annoyingly long.  Only three xterms are
executed by fvwm as it initiates, and all of the rest of that
gets done manually.  As you can imagine, I am relutant to log
out except when absolutely necessary.

>Hm.  Ion supports the dynamic workspace allocation well: it allows you
>to enter a name, then it creates a workspace by that name.  And you
>can select a workspace by name.  This means that if you always use the
>project name as workspace name, then it doesn't matter which set of
>projects you happen to work on today.

I would guess that if a person developed the same regimen with
name selection that I have with vertical positioning, it would
be essentially identical.  The only difference is that I can
look at the FvwmPager window and sometimes, though not always,
see something odd that indicates what is on a particular
desktop, and then selection is instant.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[Zajcev Evgeny]

jsbien@mimuw.edu.pl (Janusz S. Bie?) wrote in message news:<mailman.363.1101029322.27204.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>...
> On Sat, 20 Nov 2004  Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
> 
> > floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
> > 
> > > Of course, again, the point is that an X window manager is
> > > flexible, and *any* of those options can be changed to suit
> > > *any* user.
> > 
> > Oh, no!  I've tried twm, piewm, olvwm, mwm, dtwm, ctwm, fvwm1, fvwm2,
> > wmaker, ion, larswm, wmx, sawfish, MetaCity, ratpoison, IceWM,
> > BlackBox, FluxBox, OpenBox, and perhaps some others, and none of them
> > suits me, and none of them was flexible enough.
> > 
> > Currently, I use OpenBox.  It's painful, but I can bear it.
> 
> Has anybody tried XWEM?
> 
>         http://www.nongnu.org/xwem/
> 
>          XWEM is extremly usable and configurable Window Manager, if you are
>          familar with Emacs editor, then you are automatically familar with
>          XWEM.
> 

XWEM does not work under GNU Emacs control.  But only on XEmacs, and
it is already official xemacs package(you can grab most recent sources
from xemacs packages cvs repository).  Link above is out of date. 
Most recent information about XWEM you can find at http://www.xwem.org

Reading this thread about how people uses X was really exciting, i
found that XWEM benefits almost every idea about managing windows that
was mentioned in this thread.

--
XWEM - Makes RMS run XEmacs in secret.

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Combs]

In article <20041123122715.GC4069@matijek.v10a.ath.cx>,
Alex Polite  <m4@polite.se> wrote:
>On tis, nov 16, 2004 at 06:09:01 +0800, William Xuuu wrote:
>> 
>> Me too, :-) The fontify, the fonts, are much much nicer under console than
>> X. And the black background, good for eyes. I do most things within Emacs
>> under console, except interactive bash, and some stuffs that have to be
>> done under X, like viewing pdf, manipulating pictures, web browsing with
>> pictures, etc.
>> 
>
>
>Try out color-theme.el
>
>http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme
>
>Screenshots are here:
>
>http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/GNUEmacsColorThemeTest/
>
>Some of the themes are desinged for console displays. 

Am a bit confused by the terminology:

Don't "conosole displays" usually run *under* x11?

So, what *is* a "console display"?  What makes a window (er, frame)
a console-display rather than something elsed?

Myself, I'm using a sunblade-100, solaris-9, CDE I think it is,
and am using a "dtterm".  Where does that fit into the vocab?

Now, I can choose something called a (the?) "conosole", which
seems to me to be just another dtterm with the *title* of
"console".

Where does *that* fit into this terminology?

Thanks!

David

PS: I "live" in emacs -- start it up when bring up the
machine, and exit it only when about to take down the
machine.

Even have learned how to use cursor-controlling programs
like more (well, not that one, but you get the idea)
from *shell* by simply piping to cat.

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Combs]

In article <mailman.2999.1100584262.8225.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
Joe Corneli  <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
>   > I think it will be a long time before a emacs-based browser would
>   > work as well as one of the popular web browsers.
>   
>   I would be willing to put up with a fair amount of clunkiness in
>   other departments if I could have a browser in which every text
>   window was an Emacs window.  Replacing Pine & NN with Gnus was a
>   new birth of freedom for me.
>
>You can use Lynx and set the editor to emacs.  This is what I do,
>and it works fine.  (Lynx isn't running under Emacs though, just
>invoking it.)  I'm pretty sure there is also a plugin for Mozilla
>that lets you edit text fields with the editor of your choice.
>Presumably emacs-w3m also has the feature you're looking for (and it
>does run under emacs), though I don't use it personally.
>
>

What do you do to not start up a new emacs each time?

Even better, how to awaken an existing emacs, *but*
with the lynx-page (or whatever) already sitting
in a buffer?

Thanks,

David

Re: emacs for everything?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> In article <mailman.2999.1100584262.8225.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
> Joe Corneli  <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> >   > I think it will be a long time before a emacs-based browser would
> >   > work as well as one of the popular web browsers.
> >   
> >   I would be willing to put up with a fair amount of clunkiness in
> >   other departments if I could have a browser in which every text
> >   window was an Emacs window.  Replacing Pine & NN with Gnus was a
> >   new birth of freedom for me.
> >
> >You can use Lynx and set the editor to emacs.  This is what I do,
> >and it works fine.  (Lynx isn't running under Emacs though, just
> >invoking it.)  I'm pretty sure there is also a plugin for Mozilla
> >that lets you edit text fields with the editor of your choice.
> >Presumably emacs-w3m also has the feature you're looking for (and it
> >does run under emacs), though I don't use it personally.
> >
> >
> 
> What do you do to not start up a new emacs each time?
> 
> Even better, how to awaken an existing emacs, *but*
> with the lynx-page (or whatever) already sitting
> in a buffer?

(server-start) in ~/.emacs
Then use emacs-client instead of emacs
I have an alias ec='emacs-client --no-wait'


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Combs]

In article <87oeh82hia.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>,
Pascal Bourguignon  <spam@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
...
>> 
>> What do you do to not start up a new emacs each time?
>> 
>> Even better, how to awaken an existing emacs, *but*
>> with the lynx-page (or whatever) already sitting
>> in a buffer?
>
>(server-start) in ~/.emacs
>Then use emacs-client instead of emacs
>I have an alias ec='emacs-client --no-wait'
>
>
>-- 
>__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
>The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.

Thanks!

David

Re: emacs for everything?

[Ravi Uday]

David Combs wrote:

> In article <87oeh82hia.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>,
> Pascal Bourguignon  <spam@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> ...
> 
>>>What do you do to not start up a new emacs each time?
>>>
>>>Even better, how to awaken an existing emacs, *but*
>>>with the lynx-page (or whatever) already sitting
>>>in a buffer?
>>
>>(server-start) in ~/.emacs
>>Then use emacs-client instead of emacs
>>I have an alias ec='emacs-client --no-wait'
>>

   Is emacs-client different from emacs21/emacs19 orso ?
   When i tried to issue that 'ec' command on my SunOs it says

bash-2.05b$ emacs-client --no-wait
bash: emacs-client: command not found

- Ravi



>>
>>-- 
>>__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
>>The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.
> 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> David
> 
> 

Re: emacs for everything?

[Neon Absentius]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 12:34:24PM +0530, Ravi Uday wrote:
> -- 8< --
> >>(server-start) in ~/.emacs
> >>Then use emacs-client instead of emacs
> >>I have an alias ec='emacs-client --no-wait'
> >>
>
>   Is emacs-client different from emacs21/emacs19 orso ?
>   When i tried to issue that 'ec' command on my SunOs it says
>
> bash-2.05b$ emacs-client --no-wait
> bash: emacs-client: command not found
>

The command is `emacsclient', one word with no dash.

I belive that was a misprint in the previous message, maybe due to the
dash in the command that start the sever ;)

> - Ravi
>

--
Charity in capitalism is like urinating to extinguish a forest fire.
    -- Neon Absentius
absent a.in.cirle sdf period lonestar period org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

Re: emacs for everything?

[Ravi Uday]

<snip>
> 
> 
> The command is `emacsclient', one word with no dash.
> 
> I belive that was a misprint in the previous message, maybe due to the
> dash in the command that start the sever ;)
> 

Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable this 
client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which could be easily 
followed ?

> 
>>- Ravi
>>
> 
> 
> --
> Charity in capitalism is like urinating to extinguish a forest fire.
>     -- Neon Absentius
> absent a.in.cirle sdf period lonestar period org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> 
> 

Re: emacs for everything?

[Christian Plate]

> Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable this
> client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which could be easily
> followed ?

Just do 
M-x server-start

To do this automatically on every startup, put 
(server-start)
in your .emacs!

HTH,
  Christian

Re: emacs for everything?

[Neon Absentius]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 03:02:34PM +0530, Ravi Uday wrote:

> Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable
> this
> client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which could be
> easily
> followed ?

Either interactively

M-x server-start

or by putting

(server-start)

in your .emacs so that the server will automatically start when emacs
starts up.

--
Charity in capitalism is like urinating to extinguish a forest fire.
    -- Neon Absentius
absent a.in.cirle sdf period lonestar period org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

Re: emacs for everything?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 30.12.2004 um 10:32 schrieb Ravi Uday:

> Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable this 
> client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which could be easily 
> followed ?

In your ~/.emacs:

(server-start)

--
Greetings

   Pete

Besides being a true statement, what is the following:

Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one?

Re: emacs for everything?

[kurtz]

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Ravi Uday escribe:
> Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable this 
> client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which could be easily 
> followed ?

I set in my .bashrc something like alias emacs="`emacswrapper.sh`"
where emacswrapper.sh is the attached script.

Here, dtemacs is a nice script provided with the Debian gnuserv
package. Google for it if not using Debian. It tries to contact emacs
with gnuclient, starting a new emacs if there is no answer. Thanks to
my emacswrapper.sh script, whenever I call `emacs', the correct
instance for me is executed, this is, `emacs -nw' if connected by ssh,
`dtemacs' if on Linux with X running, `gnuclientw' if on a cygwin
environment and a bare `emacs' in any other case.

Works for me, I hope is also useful for you. Of course, YMMV!
-- 
http colon slash slash kurtz dot blogsite dot org

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Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Ravi Uday <raviuday@gmail.com> wrote:
><snip>
>> The command is `emacsclient', one word with no dash.
>> I belive that was a misprint in the previous message, maybe
>> due to the
>> dash in the command that start the sever ;)
>>
>
>Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable
>this client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which
>could be easily followed ?

Everyone is telling you to put it into your ~/.emacs, and I'm
going to tell you *do not do that*!  If you do, it means you
cannot execute Emacs without starting a server...  a limitation
you do *not* want.

So...  make either an alias or a shell function to invoke the
server in a different manner than a regular Emacs.  For example,
"alias emacs-server=/usr/bin/emacs -f server-start" is just about
the simplest way to start it.

However there are other options and issues you might want to
think about too...

Since it is a server, you may want it to be invoked by the startup
for either your login shell or perhaps a window manager.  In the
case of starting by a window manager, you don't need to ever see
the actual emacs window!  So use the "-iconic" command line option
to get rid of it.

  alias emacs-server=/usr/bin/emacs -iconic -f server-start"

Another possibility is that you'll want other changes to the
initialized environment for the server that are different from an
emacs invoked separately.  That is easy to accomplish too,

  alias emacs-server=/usr/bin/emacs -l ~/.emacs-server -iconic

Now it will, after reading the regular init files (i.e.,
~/.emacs), also read ~/.emacs-server.  You can put whatever
changes you want into that file, and end it with "server-start"
in order to invoke the server.

What would you want different???  Well, ymmv, but I don't want to
kill the server everytime I type in C-x C-c (which is exactly what
happens if you do that with only one emacsclient process active).

Exiting with C-x C-c is a reflex that my fingers know very well,
so I want to continue using that, but don't want to ever kill
the server with it.  So in my case I've redefined the exit code
that C-x C-c is bound to.

 ;; for GNU Emacs only
 (unless (featurep 'xemacs)
   (defvar current-frame nil)
   (setq gnuserv-frame (current-frame)))

 ;;
 ;;  disallow exiting from a command  (menu option only)
 ;;
 (defun do-exit ()
   "Exits Emacs or an Emacs client"
     (interactive)
   (if   (gnuserv-running-p)
       (if (eq gnuserv-clients nil) (delete-frame) (gnuserv-edit))))

 (define-key ctl-x-map "\C-c" 'do-exit)


Warning: I use XEmacs, not GNU's version.  Hence none of the
above has been tested in a long time and is provided as an
example of where to start.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Kastrup]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Ravi Uday <raviuday@gmail.com> wrote:
>><snip>
>>> The command is `emacsclient', one word with no dash.
>>> I belive that was a misprint in the previous message, maybe
>>> due to the
>>> dash in the command that start the sever ;)
>>>
>>
>>Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable
>>this client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which
>>could be easily followed ?
>
> Everyone is telling you to put it into your ~/.emacs, and I'm going
> to tell you *do not do that*!  If you do, it means you cannot
> execute Emacs without starting a server...  a limitation you do
> *not* want.

emacs -q

but apart from that, if a server is already running, no new server
gets started.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> Ravi Uday <raviuday@gmail.com> wrote:
>>><snip>
>>>> The command is `emacsclient', one word with no dash.
>>>> I belive that was a misprint in the previous message, maybe
>>>> due to the
>>>> dash in the command that start the sever ;)
>>>>
>>>
>>>Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable
>>>this client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which
>>>could be easily followed ?
>>
>> Everyone is telling you to put it into your ~/.emacs, and I'm going
>> to tell you *do not do that*!  If you do, it means you cannot
>> execute Emacs without starting a server...  a limitation you do
>> *not* want.
>
>emacs -q

Wonderful...  ;-)

(I don't think the OP wants an invocation of emacs like that.  We
are not addressing seasoned users and developers...)

>but apart from that, if a server is already running, no new server
>gets started.

Sure, but if you don't want to start a server...

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: emacs for everything?

[David Kastrup]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>>
>>> Ravi Uday <raviuday@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>><snip>
>>>>> The command is `emacsclient', one word with no dash.
>>>>> I belive that was a misprint in the previous message, maybe
>>>>> due to the
>>>>> dash in the command that start the sever ;)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Yea right, it works, but how does one start the server to enable
>>>>this client to connect to it. Do you have a procedure which
>>>>could be easily followed ?
>>>
>>> Everyone is telling you to put it into your ~/.emacs, and I'm going
>>> to tell you *do not do that*!  If you do, it means you cannot
>>> execute Emacs without starting a server...  a limitation you do
>>> *not* want.
>>
>>emacs -q
>
> Wonderful...  ;-)
>
> (I don't think the OP wants an invocation of emacs like that.  We
> are not addressing seasoned users and developers...)

Whatever.

>>but apart from that, if a server is already running, no new server
>>gets started.
>
> Sure, but if you don't want to start a server...

emacs --eval "(defalias 'server-start 'ignore)"

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum