OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[William Case]

Hi;

What are all you people doing with emacs ?

I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
and not the young.

The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
being done by command line?  

I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
about.

This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.

-- 
Regards Bill

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Leo]

On 2007-02-08, William Case said:

> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
>
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
>
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
>
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
>
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but
> if some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be
> really interested in knowing just what people really do with it.
> Emacs I mean.

Writing papers: AUCTeX
Scientific computing: ess (R), maxima-el (maxima)
Email: Gnus
Contacts: BBDB
IRC: Erc
Personal information manager: Calendar/Diary + orgmode
Browser: emacs-w3m
RPN Calculator: Calc
............

-- 
Leo <sdl.web AT gmail.com>                         (GPG Key: 9283AA3F)

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[CHENG Gao]

I am an Emacs newbie though I tested the water 15 years ago. At that
time I felt it's very interesting and too difficult to learn. I was a
boy just graduated from university.

Fours years ago, I began to learn to use Emacs seriously. Mostly Gnus for
news reading and archiving emails.

Now I switched to only use Gnus as email client, and dumped Mail.app
under MacOSX, and Evolution under GNU/Linux. 

And learning to use Org mode for work notes, planning etc. In office,
besides OOo for documents and spreadsheets, Emacs is almost the only app
I use. Sure I need offlineimap to sync emails from several IMAP accounts
to my notebook and home Mac, and msmtp for email sending since I need
send email from several addresses. 

Recently I tested Bongo, and found it's very interesting. Plan to use it
to play music.

Sure ERC for chatting though I seldom do online chatting. I am seeking a
sound solution to do MSN chat within Emacs (for work communication).
Just feel erc+bitlbee is too complicated. I wonder if emacs-jabber can
do this. I need time to look into this. 

Emacs is full of fun. Sadly I mostly use it for serious purposes.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[ken]

Congratulations on your early retirement.  Wish I was there....

I've been using emacs for a long time-- somewhere around two decades.
I've done a *lot* of programming and have tried to made something with
elisp, but without the help of folks on this list, most of what I've
tried hasn't worked out.  So unless I've got tons of time on my hands
(never) and go in with no expectation of success, I just modify existing
elisp code.

I do use emacs every day though.  Except for when I pop into a file one
time in the day for just a few minutes, I use emacs for creating C code,
html docs, and flat ASCII files.  I use diary-mode too, but that's only
because there isn't a good linux app (that I know of) for keeping lots
of appointments.

I run a lot of other apps, so run emacs in its own window... most of the
time I have more than one emacs window (aka frame) open at the same time.

I tried a few times to use emacs for email, but the mail setup I have
(four or five accounts using IMAPS and TLS) is just too complicated to
set up in emacs.  It's even too hairy for me to do in pine.  It's a snap
in Thunderbird though.  Maybe someday....


Welcome to the list.  Have fun.

-- 
"The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas.
Tolerant like the sky all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a
mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination
in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his
way." -- Tao Te Ching



On 02/08/2007 10:45 AM somebody named William Case wrote:
> Hi;
> 
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
> 
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
> 
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
> 
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
> 
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.
> 

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[CHENG Gao]

*On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:00:36 -0500
* ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> climbed out of the dark hell and cried out:

> I tried a few times to use emacs for email, but the mail setup I have
> (four or five accounts using IMAPS and TLS) is just too complicated to
> set up in emacs.  It's even too hairy for me to do in pine.  It's a snap
> in Thunderbird though.  Maybe someday....

I have five IMAP(S) accounts. 
I tested two solutions:

1. nnimap
Setup is very simple. Just add five accounts to
gnus-second-select-methods. And add auth into to .authinfo.
Install STARTTLS or gnutls-cli.

I used this solution and found it's too slow for me. So I turned to
solution 2. I am very happy with it.

2. offlineimap+nnmaildir
Use offlineimap to sync all emails to local machine(s). And add five
nnmaildir to gnus-second-select-methods. Much faster.

You can have a try. Absolutely not difficult as you may think.

FYI, I use Emacs 23 and No Gnus 0.6.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Matthew Flaschen]

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ken wrote:
> I do use emacs every day though.  Except for when I pop into a file one
> time in the day for just a few minutes, I use emacs for creating C code,
> html docs, and flat ASCII files.  I use diary-mode too, but that's only
> because there isn't a good linux app (that I know of) for keeping lots
> of appointments.

Mozilla Sunbird works fine for me.

Matthew Flaschen


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Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

William Case wrote:
> Hi;
> 
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
...
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.


I started using Emacs because I got really tired of all different 
programs I had to learn to do all different kinds of programming, web 
authoring etc. It just took too much time learning all these different 
environments. Wasted time.

Actually I felt I was just kind working for those companies that sold 
all these proprietary programming tools I used. Struggling with all the 
problems and constraints they had. Learning Emacs instead seem to be 
something that would be good in the long run.

And beside that Emacs let me use my vi typing skills and that makes it 
quite a bit easier for me to do things quickly.

So I try to use Emacs for most editing and writing. Though I am using 
Thunderbird as my mail client. I found it too hard to get any Emacs mail 
client working on MS Windows. The instructions unfortunately did not 
seem trustworthy for MS Windows and I depend on that my mail client 
works without problems.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:41:31 +0100
> From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> Cc: EMACS List <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> I am using Thunderbird as my mail client. I found it too hard to get
> any Emacs mail client working on MS Windows. The instructions
> unfortunately did not seem trustworthy for MS Windows and I depend
> on that my mail client works without problems.

I find the current instructions so easy and reliable that I cannot
understand how someone with your, Lennart, experience could not
succeed to set up email in Emacs on Windows.

It worked for me 5 seconds after I installed Emacs on Windows for the
first time, as soon as I've set 3 variables (smtpmail-smtp-server,
smtpmail-smtp-service, and smtpmail-auth-credentials).

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/9/07, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> It worked for me 5 seconds after I installed Emacs on Windows for the
> first time, as soon as I've set 3 variables (smtpmail-smtp-server,
> smtpmail-smtp-service, and smtpmail-auth-credentials).

That's for sending mail, which is easier. How do you set up mail in
Windows for reading from inside Emacs? Other than using Gnus, I mean.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 17:19:48 +0100
> From: "Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> That's for sending mail, which is easier. How do you set up mail in
> Windows for reading from inside Emacs? Other than using Gnus, I mean.

You mean, Rmail?  What are the problems with that? I'm not aware of
any.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/9/07, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> You mean, Rmail?

I suppose so. I've never read mail from Emacs.

> What are the problems with that? I'm not aware of any.

I'm just pointing out that it surely needs a setup too, which wasn't
included in the five minutes you quoted before.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 17:40:55 +0100
> From: "Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> > You mean, Rmail?
> 
> I suppose so. I've never read mail from Emacs.
> 
> > What are the problems with that? I'm not aware of any.
> 
> I'm just pointing out that it surely needs a setup too

Two more variables:

   (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("po:YOUR-POP3-USERNAME") 
         rmail-pop-password-required t)

(this is explained in the manual, btw).

> which wasn't included in the five minutes you quoted before.

It was five seconds, and yes, the Rmail setup was included.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[CHENG Gao]

*On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:59:43 +0200
* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> climbed out of the dark hell and cried out:

>> Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:41:31 +0100
>> From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
>> Cc: EMACS List <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
>> 
>> I am using Thunderbird as my mail client. I found it too hard to get
>> any Emacs mail client working on MS Windows. The instructions
>> unfortunately did not seem trustworthy for MS Windows and I depend
>> on that my mail client works without problems.
>
> I find the current instructions so easy and reliable that I cannot
> understand how someone with your, Lennart, experience could not
> succeed to set up email in Emacs on Windows.
>
> It worked for me 5 seconds after I installed Emacs on Windows for the
> first time, as soon as I've set 3 variables (smtpmail-smtp-server,
> smtpmail-smtp-service, and smtpmail-auth-credentials).

Before dumping Windows, I used self built Emacs CVS with Gnus for some
time (2 years? Dont remember). I dont think there is any difference from
setting up in GNU/Linux or MacOSX (only I need set up to use bdf fonts).
I installed cygwin, and built Emacs with mingw, and run from cygwin (for
purpose of easily using cygwin apps like w3m, uncompface etc.).

I am very happy for this, since when I move to my Mac and Ubuntu, I only
need to copy two dirs out (~/gnus/ for all mails, score files etc,
~/.emacs.d/ for all Emacs related conf files), and put them under home
dir, and voila!
(This is one of the reasons I love Emacs/Gnus to death.)

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/9/07, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> It worked for me 5 seconds after I installed Emacs on Windows for the
>> first time, as soon as I've set 3 variables (smtpmail-smtp-server,
>> smtpmail-smtp-service, and smtpmail-auth-credentials).
>
> That's for sending mail, which is easier. How do you set up mail in
> Windows for reading from inside Emacs? Other than using Gnus, I mean.

I use vm on Linux.  
I can't imagine why it should work differently on MS-Windows.

You could try Mew too.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

"Logiciels libres : nourris au code source sans farine animale."

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/9/07, Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:

> I use vm on Linux.
> I can't imagine why it should work differently on MS-Windows.

I don't think VM is included with Emacs.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/9/07, Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
>
>> I use vm on Linux.
>> I can't imagine why it should work differently on MS-Windows.
>
> I don't think VM is included with Emacs.

So what?

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS d? s++:++ a+ C+++ UL++++ P--- L+++ E+++ W++ N+++ o-- K- w--- 
O- M++ V PS PE++ Y++ PGP t+ 5+ X++ R !tv b+++ DI++++ D++ 
G e+++ h+ r-- z? 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/10/07, Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:

> So what?

Having to look for external packages adds complexity. We were
discussing the easiness of configuring Emacs to read and write e-mail
on Windows. From "set these variables" to "download that package and
set it up" there's a big jump.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tassilo Horn]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Juanma,

>> It worked for me 5 seconds after I installed Emacs on Windows for the
>> first time, as soon as I've set 3 variables (smtpmail-smtp-server,
>> smtpmail-smtp-service, and smtpmail-auth-credentials).
>
> That's for sending mail, which is easier. How do you set up mail in
> Windows for reading from inside Emacs? Other than using Gnus, I mean.

What's wrong with Gnus?

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
      "DRM manages rights in the same way a jail manages freedom"

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/10/07, Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> wrote:

> What's wrong with Gnus?

Nothing, of course, but it's a bit overkill if you don't read
newsgroups, just mail.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tassilo Horn]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Juanma,

>> What's wrong with Gnus?
>
> Nothing, of course, but it's a bit overkill if you don't read
> newsgroups, just mail.

What do you care about? A few kb memory a less featured specialized mail
reader could save?

I wouldn't mind about that. Gnus is perfectly suited as mail reader.

I've read that wanderlust is a good alternative, especially if you use
IMAP. Maybe that fits your needs better, but it's not part of emacs.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it
needs to be.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/11/07, Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> wrote:

> What do you care about? A few kb memory a less featured specialized mail
> reader could save?

Many features = complex interface. I've set up Gnus a few times, and
I've always found it too complex for what I tried to do with it.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Hadron]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/11/07, Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> wrote:
>
>> What do you care about? A few kb memory a less featured specialized mail
>> reader could save?
>
> Many features = complex interface. I've set up Gnus a few times, and
> I've always found it too complex for what I tried to do with it.

What did you try to do with it? I use it primarily is a mail client and
find it excellent - especially when you then consider you can add
newsgroups, web browsing etc.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/11/07, Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> wrote:

> What did you try to do with it?

Read mail.

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Mathias Dahl]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> It worked for me 5 seconds after I installed Emacs on Windows for
> the first time, as soon as I've set 3 variables
> (smtpmail-smtp-server, smtpmail-smtp-service, and
> smtpmail-auth-credentials).

Anyone tried this with Gmail as well? From what I have gathered around
the net, it is nearly impossible to setup. Even under GNU/Linux I
think.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Mathias Dahl]

CHENG Gao <chenggao@gmail.com> writes:

> I am seeking a sound solution to do MSN chat within Emacs (for work
> communication).  Just feel erc+bitlbee is too complicated. I wonder
> if emacs-jabber can do this.

Look no further. Get yourself a Jabber account on some nice server
(jabber.se maybe) and use emacs jabber to chat to your
MSN/ICQ/whatever buddies.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[CHENG Gao]

*On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:54:24 +0100
* Mathias Dahl <brakjoller@gmail.com> climbed out of the dark hell and cried out:

> CHENG Gao <chenggao@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I am seeking a sound solution to do MSN chat within Emacs (for work
>> communication).  Just feel erc+bitlbee is too complicated. I wonder
>> if emacs-jabber can do this.
>
> Look no further. Get yourself a Jabber account on some nice server
> (jabber.se maybe) and use emacs jabber to chat to your
> MSN/ICQ/whatever buddies.
Great! Thanks for your info. I can not find this in emacs jabber manual. 

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Mathias Dahl]

CHENG Gao <chenggao@gmail.com> writes:

> *On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:54:24 +0100

> * Mathias Dahl <brakjoller@gmail.com> climbed out of the dark hell
> and cried out:
>
>> CHENG Gao <chenggao@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> I am seeking a sound solution to do MSN chat within Emacs (for
>>> work communication).  Just feel erc+bitlbee is too complicated. I
>>> wonder if emacs-jabber can do this.
>>
>> Look no further. Get yourself a Jabber account on some nice server
>> (jabber.se maybe) and use emacs jabber to chat to your
>> MSN/ICQ/whatever buddies.

> Great! Thanks for your info. I can not find this in emacs jabber manual. 

What was it that you didn't find in the manual? That you can use it to
chat with MSN/ICQ-friends or how to do it?

I should also say that jabber.el itself does not handle the MSN/ICQ
protocols, the jabber server does this.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[CHENG Gao]

*On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 08:00:15 +0100
* Mathias Dahl <brakjoller@gmail.com> climbed out of the dark hell and cried out:


> What was it that you didn't find in the manual? That you can use it to
> chat with MSN/ICQ-friends or how to do it?
>
> I should also say that jabber.el itself does not handle the MSN/ICQ
> protocols, the jabber server does this.

You know I had no idea about Jabber until recently. I dont like online
chat.
But with your instruction, I visited jabber.org and then followed link
to xmpp.net and found info about jabber.se. I understood that I need a
server with msn transport, and jabber.se has this gateway. So I
registered there and added msn to transport. Now I can chat with
jabber.el.

What I mean is jabber manual should mention that with server support it
can be used to chat with msn/yim/icq etc. You know for a jabber newbie
like me, if there is no mentioning of this capability, we may turn
around and go to other apps or sit at the corner of some street and cry
our hearts out.

Anyway thanks, I can chat within Emacs now.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Mathias Dahl]

CHENG Gao <chenggao@gmail.com> writes:

> *On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 08:00:15 +0100 * Mathias Dahl
> <brakjoller@gmail.com> climbed out of the dark hell and cried out:
>
>
>> What was it that you didn't find in the manual? That you can use it to
>> chat with MSN/ICQ-friends or how to do it?
>>
>> I should also say that jabber.el itself does not handle the MSN/ICQ
>> protocols, the jabber server does this.
>
> You know I had no idea about Jabber until recently. I dont like
> online chat.  But with your instruction, I visited jabber.org and
> then followed link to xmpp.net and found info about jabber.se. I
> understood that I need a server with msn transport, and jabber.se
> has this gateway. So I registered there and added msn to
> transport. Now I can chat with jabber.el.

Cool! Not all jabber newbies suceed as fast as you did :)

> What I mean is jabber manual should mention that with server support
> it can be used to chat with msn/yim/icq etc. You know for a jabber
> newbie like me, if there is no mentioning of this capability, we may
> turn around and go to other apps or sit at the corner of some street
> and cry our hearts out.

I am sure Magnus will see this and react accordingly... :)

> Anyway thanks, I can chat within Emacs now.

...and the world was a better place...

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[mkeller]

Hi Will,

I find it cool that you're getting into emacs in your retirement years.
Speaks volume of who you are I think. What'd you do before retirement?

Anyway, I'm an emacs newbie (using it for abt 6 months), and use it for work
doing statistical genetics. For now, I solely use it as an interface for the
R statistical program. It has been great in this regard, but sometimes I get
frustrated as hell with it and want to foresake it all and go back to the R
gui (e.g., right now trying to figure out how to get the ediff thing to
work). But overall, I love the concept of open source software, and open
source journals for that matter, and I think emacs is great.

Matt



William Case wrote:
> 
> Hi;
> 
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
> 
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
> 
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
> 
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
> 
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.
> 
> -- 
> Regards Bill
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> help-gnu-emacs mailing list
> help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
> 
> 

-- 
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Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tom Rauchenwald]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?

I started using Emacs a few months ago. When I first tried it 2 years
ago or so I didn't find my way around at all, so this time I thought I
would force myself using it, so I switched my email to Gnus (used
Sylpheed before that). Gnus is just fantastic, before that I never
really used Usenet, but now I read various groups (and I unsubscribed
from various mailinglists and switched to Gmane). 

A little bit later I started using Erc for IRC. Before that I used
weechat or irssi. At the beginning I found using it weird, because I
didn't really get the buffer-management at the time (switching to Gnus
for instance destroyed my carefully setup window-layout). 

Other than that I use Emacs for programming.

One of the killer features for me is the integrated
documentation. Nearly every function is documented, and when browsing
through the info-manual, one often finds new and interesting
things. The Emacswiki is also a fountain of knowledge (its search
sucks, though).

My .emacs is like entropy, it only gets larger, and never smaller ;-)

Tom

-- 
Pet piglet.  Don't forget to play Car Bomb.  Your abode will be
fluctuating in the next 4 or 9 months.  Adjust your girdle with the
help of the mailman.  You'll never be confused.  Your lucky number
today is 29842924728.  Look for it everywhere.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tyler Smith]

On 2007-02-08, William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> wrote:
> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
>

I use it for writing papers (Auctex mode for LaTeX) and analysis (Ess
mode for R). I also use it as my mail and newsgroup editor. I haven't
figured out gnus yet, but eventually I expect I'll migrate to that and
retire mutt and slrn. 

When I'm writing or working on stats I generally use it as an X app,
with 2-6 buffers of scripts, papers, and processes on two Emacs
windows, plus the additional X windows that are generated with xdvi
and R. When I'm doing quick edits or responding to mail or newsgroups
I use it in a terminal. I usually have Emacs, firefox, and a bunch of
xterms running spread over four desktops with fluxbox, although as I
get more comfortable with Emacs I do more of my command line stuff
from there, either with meta-! or shell-mode.

I've been using Emacs for a year or two now, and I'm constantly
learning how to make better use of its capabilities, so I'm interested
in the response from more experienced users.

Thanks for the study-break!

-- 
Regards,

Tyler Smith

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?

Everything.

Including coffee! 

http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:rFz1-BnQCfEJ:www.chez.com/emarsden/downloads/coffee.el+coffee.el&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1


> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
>
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  

There are a lot of programs running in emacs, web, ftp, mail, news,
spreadsheets, games, file management, databases, MP3 and movie
players, etc.  And indeed, there are a couple of IDE for programmers.

But mostly, the only applications I run beside emacs are one xterm
(with screen(1)), Firefox, since there remains a lot of web sites that
don't work too well with only w3m, and an occasional Acroreader.

For applications, you can consider emacs as a user interface layer.
Some programs are structured this way, with an engine working in an
"inferior" process, and the user interface written in emacs.
For example, PVS http://pvs.csl.sri.com/


> Do you use it full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a
> virtual terminal?  Is it the only program you have running at start
> up with everything else being done by command line?  


I use GNU emacs on X usually (occasionnaly in xterm or PuTTY, mostly
for remote sessions).

Usually, I've got two emacs frames dividing screen space in two.  
I've got a few commands to position the frames automatically, and even
optionnally moving the X window decorations out of screen, so only
emacs pixels can be seen.

See maximize-frame, full-frame, etc in:
http://darcs.informatimago.com/darcs/public/emacs/pjb-emacs.el
http://darcs.informatimago.com/darcs/public/emacs


> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
>
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.

There are also various IRC client in emacs, like ERC: 
http://delysid.org/emacs/erc.html
which allows you to chat on line eg. in irc://irc.freenode.org/#emacs

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice
is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in
all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way
is Lisp. -- Alan Kay

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[thorne]

Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:
> Everything.
>
> Including coffee! 
>
> http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:rFz1-BnQCfEJ:www.chez.com/emarsden/downloads/coffee.el+coffee.el&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

Where exactly does one obtain an rfc2324 compliant coffee maker, i'd
like to know.


The OP wrote (i forgot his name, sorry):
>> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
>> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
>> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
>> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
>> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
>> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  

I use Eshell a lot.

Gnus for nntp and some mail (still haven't found out how to get gmail
working in gnus).  I tend to use emacs in X most of the time, but
usually (though not always) i tend to use gnus in a screen(1) session
from a tty on my server at home.  That way i can just attach to it
from work or on the road and have the same state--no load-up time.
What i am excited about is this thing that is being worked on that
gives multiple tty support: http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html.hu .
So, if i understand it correctly, i will be able to run an instance of
emacs in X on my server's desktop, then attach to the same running
instance from work via ssh in tty mode, etc....  That will be cool.

Other than that... i am trying to learn some common lisp, so i use
slime a lot.

I don't watch movies or listen to music through the computer much,
except music at work where i am stuck with Win XP.  I have not looked
into emms yet.  Maybe i should.

The web is the one place where i pretty much have given up on emacs.
I just use firefox.  I use w3 for looking up stuff in the common lisp
hyperspec, because it works ok.  But most of the web is just not very
fun in emacs... for me.  Just not what emacs was designed for, i
gather.

-- 
þ    theron tlax    þ

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Joost Kremers]

thorne wrote:
>  But most of the web is just not very
> fun in emacs... for me.  Just not what emacs was designed for, i
> gather.

erm. you mean to say that the web wasn't designed for emacs.

-- 
Joost Kremers                                      joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> writes:

> thorne wrote:
>>  But most of the web is just not very
>> fun in emacs... for me.  Just not what emacs was designed for, i
>> gather.
>
> erm. you mean to say that the web wasn't designed for emacs.

The web was designed for emacs, originally!  w3m would have no
difficulty in rendering web pages written in 1994.  It's later
botching of the web that loses.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
The mighty hunter
Returns with gifts of plump birds,
Your foot just squashed one.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Joost Kremers]

Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> The web was designed for emacs, originally!  w3m would have no
> difficulty in rendering web pages written in 1994.  It's later
> botching of the web that loses.

well, just so long as it is clear where the design fault lies. ;-)


-- 
Joost Kremers                                      joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tim X]

Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:

> Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> thorne wrote:
>>>  But most of the web is just not very
>>> fun in emacs... for me.  Just not what emacs was designed for, i
>>> gather.
>>
>> erm. you mean to say that the web wasn't designed for emacs.
>
> The web was designed for emacs, originally!  w3m would have no
> difficulty in rendering web pages written in 1994.  It's later
> botching of the web that loses.
>

Actually, its a great shame there haven't been more people willing to work on
w3. This use to be a very nice emacs browser back when the web was simple. It
even had the beginning of basic javascript support back nearly 10 years ago.
However, it has really fallen by the way due to lack of people willing to
devote time to it and the rapid evolution of the web. A great shame really as I
think an elisp based web browser would be something that would allow us to add
new features quite easily as well as one which could adapt reasonably quickly. 

There were some issues with how the code was structured and some work began to
make it more modular and extensible. Unfortunatley, I've found it is now less
functional than it was 8 years ago. Its a project I've still got on my "things
I'd like to do someday" list. However, this list only seems to grow and I
probably won't get to it until retirement (which is still too far away for my
liking!). 

Bill, if your still reading this thread, I envy your position - I cannot wait
until I am retired and can spend time working on all these sorts of projects
for no other reason than they interest me. Unfortunately, the concerns of aging
baby boomers and increasing tax burden on those still working means the
Australian government (like many others) is tending to slowly increase the
retirement age. While I expect to have enough super to not depend on a
government pension, I can't see retirement arriving much before I'm 70!

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[William Case]

Hi Tim X;

[big snip]

> Bill, if your still reading this thread, I envy your position - I cannot wait
> until I am retired and can spend time working on all these sorts of projects
> for no other reason than they interest me. Unfortunately, the concerns of aging
> baby boomers and increasing tax burden on those still working means the
> Australian government (like many others) is tending to slowly increase the
> retirement age. While I expect to have enough super to not depend on a
> government pension, I can't see retirement arriving much before I'm 70!
> 
> Tim
> 
Yes Tim, I am still reading this.

When I first tried Emacs (Xemacs), I tried many of the programs
mentioned here.  None of them seemed as easy or 'intuitive' as the
equivalent desktop gui applications.  But I have resolved to try them
once again after reading what everyone has to say.

As for wishing for retirement,  I have learnt some things that can make
life better retired or not.  I had to retire for health reasons, but
have had the very good fortune to see my health steadily improve over
the last four years rather than deteriorate.

The most important thing in retirement is to keep intellectually
stimulated; but on the other had, the most important thing in life is to
keep intellectually stimulated.  The tools to do that are on the
computer and the Internet.  I have learnt more in the last four years
about an endless list of subjects; that leave me excited over things
that I never knew, in all kinds of fields, than I ever took time for
when I was younger.  Its a question of time allocation not age.

As a sidebar, it doesn't have to be expensive, but create a nice, clean
comfortable den or office for yourself and one for your spouse so that
your surroundings make it a joy to take on long periods of concentration
and so that your projects feel like your doing something workman like.

Like you say you want, now I live from one self-imposed project to the
next.  I make sure that some of the projects are about things that I
know (keeps up the self confidence and lets me run the smart-assed kids
into the ground) and projects about which I have not had any previous
interest or experience (keeps the juices flowing, the head working and
supplies me with a huge number of Eureka! moments).  But then you don't
need to retire to do that.

I am Canadian, but our governments position on pensions etc.is no
different than the problems in Australia or anywhere else.  I used to do
some work in the Canadian Health Care system; the problem of the cost of
healthy elderly has been coming for a long time.  For example, I am 63
and I have another 20 years to go before I am elderly.  In any case,
there should be an international movement to get older citizens using
computers, the young will naturally take care of themselves.  Technology
and the Internet are the perfect solution (for work or play) to healthy
ageing.

-- 
Regards Bill

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[William Case]

Hi Tim:

> Like you say you want, now I live from one self-imposed project to the
> next.  

One of my self-imposed projects is to see if I can post something
without typos or niggly grammar mistakes.

(Please disregard any misplaced commas or semi-colons on the previous
post).
-- 
Regards Bill

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tim X]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

> Hi Tim:
>
>> Like you say you want, now I live from one self-imposed project to the
>> next.  
>
> One of my self-imposed projects is to see if I can post something
> without typos or niggly grammar mistakes.
>
> (Please disregard any misplaced commas or semi-colons on the previous
> post).
> -- 
Hi Bill,

don't worry too much about it. People tend to knock out responses on the
Internet with speed - grammar, spelling etc, tend to be forsaken for speed and
a more relaxed conversational tone. I have no real opinion regarding whether
this is a bad thing or not, but at least it isn't geting as wild as text
messaging on phones - now thats approaching a new language! We also see a lot
of posts from people whith something other than english as their native
language. As long as its not too hard to understand the point being made,
grammar, punctuation and spelling are less critical IMO. Others will disagree. 

regards,

Tim
-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tim X]

thorne <thorne@timbral.net> writes:

> Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:
>> Everything.
>>
>> Including coffee! 
>>
>> http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:rFz1-BnQCfEJ:www.chez.com/emarsden/downloads/coffee.el+coffee.el&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
>
> Where exactly does one obtain an rfc2324 compliant coffee maker, i'd
> like to know.
>

I can't quite remember, but think it may have been the Linux journal which had
a circuit diagram and directions for creating the coffee maker. It was quite
some time ago and from memory, quite simple.  Essentially, it was just a normal
coffee maker connected to a simple power switch which could be activated from
an ethernet port which was in turn controlling the power on the coffee maker.
Not fully rfc2324 compliant I guess, but if you had one of those automated
expresso machines, like the Seko, which has a bean hopper and water tank, you
would be a long way towards being able to send a command to the coffee maker to
instruct it to make you a cup of coffee. Of course, you still need to remember
to fill it with water and coffee beans and you would always have to remember to
leave a cup under the spout if you don't want coffee going everywhere!

Many years ago, I was given some power switches which could also understand
tcp/ip via an ethernet port. I hooked them up to the stereo, kettle and coffee
perculator. I then had cron jobs that would fire up these devices each morning
monday to friday. Instead of crappy clock radio waking me up, I got good
sounding music (and music of my choice) and by the time I staggered out of the
shower, there was a hot cup of coffee waiting for me and I just put boiled
water into the tea pot for my partner (she is even worse int he mornings than I
am). The cron job would also turn everything off (well, essentially, it turned
off the music once I had left for work). 

This was pre-wireless days and after a while, my partner got the pip with all
the cables everywhere. Now the partner is gone and wireless has arrived - it
might be time to try again!

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Hadron]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
>
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
>
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
>
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
>
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I
> mean.

email and news : gnus, sendmail, pgg
irc : erc
task organization : planner & muse
html : html-helper
web publishing : ftp
programming : cc-mode, c-scope, etags, ecb, semantic
debugging : gdb

Why? because you dont really need GUI for any of that : and its great to
have everything you use regularly tied in to the same system with
concistent key bindings and "approach".

emacs takes some getting used to but when you start to get used to it,
you being to wonder why you would ever use a GUI desktop.

I have a little project lined up where finally I will learn some elisp.

And, as an added bonus, emacs has a great, friendly community.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Robert D. Crawford]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

> What are all you people doing with emacs ?

I do everything with emacs.  I use emacs via emacspeak.  emacspeak is an
eyes-free environment that allows the visually impaired to use their
computers as a rich and powerful auditory desktop.

I am running X and emacs starts immediately, much like a window
manager.  From there I use:

gnus as mail / news / rss reader

emacs/w3 and emacs-w3m to surf the web

nxml mode for html authoring 

php-mode

emacs-lisp-mode for emacs lisp

bmk-mgr mode for keeping up with web bookmarks between the browsers

and so much more.

I do all the things other computer users do.  I have to edit config
files.  I listen to music using a mode in emacspeak for mplayer.  I
listen to streaming audio.  You name it, emacs is where I do it.

Take care,
rdc
-- 
Robert D. Crawford                                      rdc1x@comcast.net

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
		-- Christopher Morley

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Rjjd]

I started using Barry Scott's emacs at DEC sometime around 1985 (I can't 
remember which year!).  The first sentence in its manual began "You are 
about to read about emacs, ...".  It sounds like a warning.  You expect 
the next clause to be "and you'll never be the same again", but I think 
it was something like "the ultimate editor" or "the world's most 
powerful editor".  (Does anyone recall?)

In 1995, I started using gnu emacs, doing C programming on Unix, with 
what seem today the primitive facilities of etags, compile, and gud/gdb. 
  Also rmail, which at the time couldn't handle attachments.  While 
working for a defense company (bleah) for a few months last year, doing 
C++ programming, I started setting up ecb.  The IDE tools orbiting emacs 
are not all that well integrated, but they are truly ingenious. 
(Programmers need the editing/interfacing tools of emacs, and the 
integration of Visual Studio.)

This group is invaluable, and I am grateful to its contributors, who 
evidently have a lot of free time...

Regards,
Bob


William Case wrote:
> Hi;
> 
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
> 
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
> 
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
> 
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
> 
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.
> 

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Robert Thorpe]

On Feb 8, 3:45 pm, William Case <billli...@rogers.com> wrote:
> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
>
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
>
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?

I use Emacs for many things, a short list would be:-
* Editing, for general text and programming purposes
* For compiling and interacting with interpreters
* As a shell, using eshell
* To browse documentation using Info and Man
* As a file manager
* As a Calculator

But I don't use it for web-browsing or email, I use separate word-
processors, spreadsheets etc.
If I didn't interact with so many people who use Outlook I'd probably
use it for email.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
> Date: 9 Feb 2007 09:26:56 -0800
> 
> If I didn't interact with so many people who use Outlook I'd probably
> use it for email.

What prevents you from using Emacs for email, even though your
correspondents use Outlook?  In other words, what's so special with
Outlook that Emacs cannot cope with?

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Galen Boyer]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, eliz@gnu.org wrote:
>> From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
>> Date: 9 Feb 2007 09:26:56 -0800
>> 
>> If I didn't interact with so many people who use Outlook I'd probably
>> use it for email.
> 
> What prevents you from using Emacs for email, even though your
> correspondents use Outlook?  In other words, what's so special with
> Outlook that Emacs cannot cope with?

Not whom you responded to, but for me, to configure Outlook I needed to
know the server and security configurations as well as if it supported
pop or IMAP and all of those questions were things that got the email
admins suspicious of my activities and brought questions from my bosses
and so I would shy away from it.  They did not want to hear that I was
using a different client than everybody else.

The other reason is that the most important thing about Outlook is the
calendar and I had no idea how to get Gnus to deal with that.

-- 
Galen Boyer

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tim X]

Galen Boyer <galen_boyer@yahoo.com> writes:

>> 
>> What prevents you from using Emacs for email, even though your
>> correspondents use Outlook?  In other words, what's so special with
>> Outlook that Emacs cannot cope with?
>
> Not whom you responded to, but for me, to configure Outlook I needed to
> know the server and security configurations as well as if it supported
> pop or IMAP and all of those questions were things that got the email
> admins suspicious of my activities and brought questions from my bosses
> and so I would shy away from it.  They did not want to hear that I was
> using a different client than everybody else.
>
> The other reason is that the most important thing about Outlook is the
> calendar and I had no idea how to get Gnus to deal with that.

The calendar and MS exchange are probably the strongest reasons people are
required to use outlook in a work situation. We have tried to avoid this for
some time, but have recently been instructed by management to trial MS exchange
because none of the other calendar systems seem to work as well or provide as
good an interface as the MS Exchange and Outlook combination. 

If the company is not using MS Exchange as the mail server, Outlook is a fairly
dumb client with calendar support not much different in fucntionality to emacs
calendar/appt modes. While outlook can work with other calendaring systems,
such as meeting maker, the quality is poor and reliability seems shabby with
frequent problems and unreliable syncing with outlook and PDAs/Phones etc.
Outlooks calendering support is notoriously unreliable if you don't also have
MS Exchange running - at least it use to be 4 years ago. 

It would seem that this is an area MS has done very well. Few of the currently
available alternatives seem as reliable and feature rich, unless you want to
pay a hell of a lot.

Tim

P.S. There is an open source calendering system - I think it is based on mono.
Can't remember the name, but last I looked, it seemed interesting (depending on
your view of mono, novell and all that political stuff!)


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Robert Thorpe]

On Feb 10, 9:53 am, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
> > From: "Robert Thorpe" <rtho...@realworldtech.com>
> > Date: 9 Feb 2007 09:26:56 -0800
>
> > If I didn't interact with so many people who use Outlook I'd probably
> > use it for email.
>
> What prevents you from using Emacs for email, even though your
> correspondents use Outlook?  In other words, what's so special with
> Outlook that Emacs cannot cope with?

The company I work is a MS shop.  They use exchange servers and the
only email systems they mandate is Outlook.  Everyone uses the meeting
planning features of Outlook.

I don't use it at home, but that's why I have to use it at work.

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Tim X]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
>
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
>
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
>
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
>
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.
>

I use emacs as my primary interface to the computer because I'm a blind user.
An example of the power of emacs is the package emacspeak. This is a package
which provides full speech feedback for users who are unable to read the
screen. The alternative to using emacs and emacspeak would be to use a screen
reader, but in comparison to emacspeak, screen readers are rather "dumb". 

As an example, emacspeak uses "voice lock mode", which is similar to font locak
mode, but instead of representing different bits of text with different fonts
and colours, voice lock uses different voices, changes in pitch and sound icons
to provide additional contextual clues via auditory means in a manner similar
to font locks use of colours and fonts to represent different textual
properties. font lock might represent bold text using a bold version of the
font while emacspeak might represent that test by speaking it in a louder or
different voice etc. 

I also do a lot of authoring and programming. Emacs is a wonderful environment
for this. I use AucTex to write high quality documents and various programming
modes to create a productive integrated development environment. The w3m-el
package gives me an integrated web browser (there is also w3, but it is
severely lacking in sufficient developers to keep pace with the rapidly
evolving web world), various good mail readers and the wonderful Gnus (which is
what I'm using now) for reading newsgroups, mail and rss. I also use many other
very useful emacs modes, such as emms for managing and playing audio content
(music, podcasts, streaming audio etc), planner mode for managing my projects,
planning activities, tracking time spent on tasks and collating information,
bbdb as an address/contact database and muse for creating documents in multiple
formats quickly and easily (bloxsom blog, web pages, pdf, texinfo, docbook
etc). I also use emacs' tramp mode to edit files on remote systems easily and
securely.

However, probably what I like best about emacs is that I can pretty much
customize it to do what I want. if i can't find an existing package to do what
I want, I can use elisp to write one or if I don't like the behavior in a
particular package, Ic an modify it using elisp functions like defadvice. I can
easily automate common tasks using a bit of elisp or a macro, which i can then
bind to a key for easy execution. Essentially, emacs gives me a powerful
programmable interface which I can configure to work the way I like rather than
having to learn a heap of different applications, some of which will have bits
I don't like and probably won't be able to change easily, if at all.

I should say that my initial attempts to learn emacs failed. this was before I
lost my sight and when I was a dedicated vi user. However, after being forced
to learn emacs (for emacspeak), I found that once I was over the learning
curve, I really began to like it moe and more. Now I cannot imagine working in
any other environment. One thing I really like is the support for the keyborad
and the fact there isn't anything you can do with the mouse you can't do with
the keybord. I think mice are an inefficient interface mechanism and believe I
can work faster using the keyboard than most mouse users. Marking the region
and using keys to cut/copy/paste is very fast an efficient. Having as many apps
working from inside emacs as possible means I can easily cut/copy and paste
between applications and never even think about the darn rodent!

regards,

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Edward Dodge]

> Hi;
>
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?

Virtually everything.  Here are my favorites:

1) USENET (Gnus)
2) e-mail (Gnus)
3) file management (dired)
4) LISP development (SLIME)
5) Notes & Journals (text/flyspell-mode)
6) General scripting and markup in Perl/sh/html/LaTeX
7) & Sometimes IRC (ERC)

<snip>

> the point of my question is i use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small c program.  i screw around with beginners level
> lisp and watch things not work.  but as i read the posts on the
> mailing list it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.

There are four key things to remember about Emacs:

1) EMACS IS A CLASSIC. It has withstood the test of time.  It has been
   here for years and it will be here for years hence.  What you learn
   today will help you in the future.

2) EMACS IS FREE.  You aren't on somebody else's $$$-upgrade treadmill
   with Emacs.  And because of the GNU liscence this versatile editor
   is one of the most ubiquitous computer tools out there.

3) EMACS RUNS ON EVERYTHING.  I first learned to use it in 1998 at
   work, when I was on an old RS6000. Since then I've used it on a
   Sun, an HP, a PC with Linux, a PC with Windows, "Classic" Mac OS,
   and now I use it on a Mac with OSX.

4) EMACS IS AN INGENIOUS TOOL.  You are only limited by your
   imagination and your desire.  Sure the learning curve is steep,
   but reasons 1), 2), & 3) make sure you aren't always aiming at a
   moving target.

> Sometimes it seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.
> Outside of programming, I am having trouble imagining why people
> would use it.  Do you use it full screen all the time; only in a
> terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is it the only program you have
> running at start up with everything else being done by command line?

I learned the Emacs text-editing commands and their associated
bind-keys well, including a few bindkeys for dired.  And I keep Emacs
open all the time in its own window, not in the terminal.  In fact,
using Emacs on OSX keeps me out of the terminal for all but the most
complicated command-line sequences.

> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am
> talking about.

Welcome to the club! ;)

> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but
> if some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be
> really interested in knowing just what people really do with it.
> Emacs I mean.

Good question.  Hope you got some good ideas here in gnu.emacs.help.

-- 
Edward Dodge