From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Benjamin Riefenstahl Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken? Date: 05 May 2003 12:45:24 +0200 Organization: None Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+gnu-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <39d9c156.0305042200.1639a252@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1052133072 12504 80.91.224.249 (5 May 2003 11:11:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 11:11:12 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+gnu-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon May 05 13:11:08 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19CdpU-00035K-00 for ; Mon, 05 May 2003 13:08:20 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10.13) id 19Cdn5-0007II-00 for gnu-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 05 May 2003 07:05:51 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!cicero.benny.turtle-trading.net!nobody Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.sys.mac.apps User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 155 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:112784 comp.sys.mac.apps:360480 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1b5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+gnu-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:9279 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help:9279 Hi bk, bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes: > I tried several builds of Aqua versions of Emacs on OSX and all of > them exhibit severe symptoms of crippleware. I understand "crippleware" as an insult without any meaning when applied to Emacs, but you hopefully didn't mean it that way. Emacs is a volunteer's effort, so it does exactly what *you* program for it or have somebody else program for it. Anything else is a free gift that we all can only appreciate. Note that I am only a user of the program, too. A lot of the Emacs users are people that are very glad that Emacs works the same as they are used to on Unix, Linux or even Windows, so they are not only willing to compromise with MacOSX guidelines, they even demand that Emacs does that. Not to mention that a lot of them prefer an Emacs in any usable state instead of not having their favorite tool at all (that would be me e.g.). OTOH if you really don't like it and don't want or can't spend the time to work it out, you are free, go ahead, get something else, there are a number of capable editors for MacOSX around, free and commercial. > Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Emacs, or so it would seem. Bug > or feature? I read that as, you are not even sure that you have read and applied all the relevant documentation, FAQs etc. In that case it would be a good idea to ask nicely how it's supposed to work, before even using the word "bug". As for your individual questions, please take all my remarks as just my personal optinions, I don't speak for anybody but myself here. > 1) No Drag and Drop - files > > On a Mac you can just drag a file icon with the mouse onto an > application icon and the application will open the file. That's not the way Emacs works usually, although it may be a good idea to implement it on MacOSX anyway. The usual way is to have a separate small command-line application "emacsclient" that talks to a server stub that is started in Emacs. It would probably not be to difficult to add an AppleEvent interface to that for use by the Finder and other applications and maybe that would be enough so it would work. Or something like that may even already exist, I haven't actually checked. Another thought (I haven't tried this). It may be possible to create an emacsclient.command script as a front for emacsclient that you can put on your desktop and on which you can drop files. Remember that the Finder with its AppleEvent-centered architecture is just one of quite a lot of GUI shells in this world as far as Emacs is concerned. Therefore solutions that build on existing Emacs techniques are more likely to work (and to work sooner) than OS-specific solutions, even if the latter would look more polished. > 2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets > > On a Mac you can just drag a snippet of text with the mouse from one > application and drag it directly into another application. You want to implement that? It is not something that Emacs has on other platforms, I think, so it's probably on the very bottom of the todo list of anybody else. As a personal note, I know several Mac users and programmers and most of them don't even know that feature, much less use it. I also know no Windows user that knows about that feature, although it does exist on Windows with some applications. > 3) Systemwide Clipboard - cut and paste > > On a Mac you can cut or copy a text snippet to the clipboard while > in one application and then paste it back while in another > application. This works. In which way (and for what version of Emacs) doesn't it work for you? You may be confused because Emacs uses different keyboard shortcuts for cut-and-paste. That's because Emacs defaults were there long before MacOS was invented. Some of the keyboard shortcuts can be added as configuration items, but some are already taken for other crucial functions in Emacs. This is a problem, and I think the only solution currently is to use some compromise. But there are quite differnt types of users, so I think everybody will have to find her/his own compromise on that, that's the intention of Emacs' configurability after all. For specifics, besides roll-your-own, look at cua-mode and pc-selection-mode. > 4) HIG violations - quitting You mean MacOSX violating Emacs HIGs? Emacs is pretty tolerant in that area, you know, it accepts whatever the users implement, thankfully it doesn't care about the dictates of any company. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that the MacOSX HIGs are bad, they are just not gospel to me, so *must* and *can't* are not terms that I associate with them. > On a Mac, all applications *must* quit when "Quit" is selected in > the applications main menu (the one that carries its name). > Further, applications *must* quit when the user choses "Quit" from > the menu in the application's dock item. Finally, Cmd-Q is the > designated keyboard shortcut for quitting. If you think so, you should configure your Emacs to do that, where is the problem? Cmd-Q doesn't have any crucial function in Emacs by default, I believe, so you are free to do what you want. > 5) HIG violations - paste > > On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this, > but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining > keyboard macros. See above. > 6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts > > Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work. Not true. Of course it's possible that something that you want to work one way, actually works differently, or even that you really encountered some isolated bugs, or something that isn't implemented. But than you'd have to be specific with what you did, what you expected to happen as a result, and what happened instead. And you want to give some data on your environment, like your Emacs version, and packages you had installed and activated when your did what you did. Oh, and it helps to be polite and nice, too. > 7) User Preferences - Fonts > > On just about every Mac application, you can set your preferred font > and size. It seems Emacs doesn't allow one to do that. How do you > change the font/size? You can change the font, but I think this area is work-in-progress even at the function level, not to mention user interface. My latest problems with that were that Carbon still uses that stupid MacRoman as a font encoding, which is hardly Emacs' fault. Yes, we should use ATSU, but than I'm not doing the work, so I don't complain. Hope this helps, benny