From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tom Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Issues with emacs Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:14:10 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <87bokbb4zw.fsf@gnu.org> <83086e1d-d66a-4e0c-95a7-92d10a6de7e7@f8g2000pbf.googlegroups.com> <87r4t3krun.fsf@friendface.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1340885690 28645 80.91.229.3 (28 Jun 2012 12:14:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:14:50 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jun 28 14:14:50 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SkDcS-00039E-PM for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:14:45 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:48009 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SkDcS-0005o4-B6 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:14:44 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:44486) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SkDcH-0005ne-Q1 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:14:38 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SkDcD-0001ys-Ew for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:14:33 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:51630) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SkDcD-0001v6-4b for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:14:29 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SkDcA-0002dD-8A for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:14:26 +0200 Original-Received: from 94-21-170-220.pool.digikabel.hu ([94.21.170.220]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:14:26 +0200 Original-Received: from adatgyujto by 94-21-170-220.pool.digikabel.hu with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:14:26 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 64 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: sea.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 94.21.170.220 (Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1; U; en) Presto/2.10.289 Version/12.00) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:85553 Archived-At: Richard Riley gmail.com> writes: > > > > Does emacs REALLY need MORE features!? It's already so complex, now, > > as to seem almost unfathomable to many. What emacs needs is some > > are features supported out of the box by other top end editors : proper > syntax/semantic based completion and code navigation that works "out of > the box" (cedet one day I hope), mixed mode editing (a must despite many > purists sneering at it)and decent java support to the level of eclipse. > There is a discussion of an article on Reddit on Java development in Emacs vs. IntelliJ IDEA. The article is a bit misguided (doesn't know about etags), but in the comments there are some useful comparisons. For example: I haven't used ctags in a few years, but it would have to improve significantly for me to want to switch back. It's hard to compare the two once you've used IntelliJ on a large project for a while. - The Parsing was very basic (a glorified regex?) in ctags. It had limited-to-no knowledge of the context of a variable, and I don't rememeber it being useful for much other than global names. A variable that is private to a class or package hierarchy, and given a name that is used in many other classes of the project (like "id") can still be navigated-to or renamed instantly and safely. - Support for embedding languages inside others. Javascript inside HTML? SQL inside Java? CSS inside HTML inside a template language? You can still use navigation, completion and refactoring. IntelliJ supports a bunch of (templating, programming and scripting) languages and can usually embed (and parse) them fairly arbitrarily (You can even tell it "this java string contains Javascript" and it will syntax highlight, provide completion and (potentially) allow navigation within it. - Find Usages. You can reliably and instantly view where a property or class is being used. It doesn't matter if there are other variables of the same name in other packages, classes or contexts. It will also show where the variable is used in templates files (or "SQL" if you're using a supported ORM like Hibernate). http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/vqb9l/ programmer_productivity_emacs_versus_intellij_idea/ It would be nice to see similar features in emacs. The question is why it is not happening. My guess is those who have to do heavy Java development have moved to Eclipse/IDEA and other tools already and those who still use Emacs for C, Lisp, orgmode, etc. don't care about Java development or see it as wasted time to implement such features in Emacs when other more capable tools exist. The problem is this decreases the overall usefulness of emacs, because Java development is lost ground and due to lack of motivation/resources there is no real effort to make emacs a competitive tool again for Java development.