From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Proulx Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Keybindings for Emacs with no X? Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 13:37:35 -0700 Message-ID: <20120203203735.GA9842@hysteria.proulx.com> References: <4f2b91e0.ea0b440a.5dde.ffffa078@mx.google.com> <20120203195821.GB1171@hysteria.proulx.com> <8739aroevn.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1328301468 12046 80.91.229.3 (3 Feb 2012 20:37:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 20:37:48 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Feb 03 21:37:47 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RtPt9-0000EU-Bj for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:37:43 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:49601 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RtPt8-0000b8-M6 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:37:42 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:41768) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RtPt4-0000as-9K for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:37:39 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RtPt3-0000PI-0l for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:37:38 -0500 Original-Received: from joseki.proulx.com ([216.17.153.58]:54886) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RtPt2-0000PC-M1 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:37:36 -0500 Original-Received: from hysteria.proulx.com (hysteria.proulx.com [192.168.230.119]) by joseki.proulx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B251211D8 for ; Fri, 3 Feb 2012 13:37:35 -0700 (MST) Original-Received: by hysteria.proulx.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 260BF2DC9D; Fri, 3 Feb 2012 13:37:35 -0700 (MST) Mail-Followup-To: Bob Proulx , help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <8739aroevn.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 2) X-Received-From: 216.17.153.58 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:83638 Archived-At: Tassilo Horn wrote: > Bob Proulx writes: > >> Why not use a GUI based emacs? > > > > One reason is because logging in over a high latency connection to a > > server on the other side of the world and trying to throw the X11 > > display back over the very slow global Internet is a test of patience. > > Yes, X11 forwarding is clearly not the way to go. I don't even install X11 libraries on server machines. And I use text consoles for the machine near my elbow too. The overhead of starting up X is significant. Text mode with a conservative startup customization will be almost instantaneous. > But why not open files on the remote server using TRAMP which comes > with emacs? First because that would require a second window and I would need to switch back and forth between my remote logged in terminal window and my local emacs editing window. Sure if you want to keep switching windows all of the time then many people keep an emacs server running continuously. That is common. That's fine. But if you just need to log into a system and do some light weight administration then you don't want to have to set up a continuously running emacs server on your desktop first. In that case you just want to edit a file. Sure I could [n]vi the file for a quick edit but I want to use emacs to edit the file not vi or nano or other editor. Therefore I will log in, do what I need to do, use emacs to edit files, and then log out. Secondly for reasons of speed. Even on fast machines and fast connections using tramp to edit a file can take many seconds while it is setting up the connection. And if this was a quick one-off task then I may not have set up my ssh-agent for ssh rsa keys yet. That will require an additional pause while I enter my ssh rsa passphrase again. In the time it takes to do this I may have already finished using emacs to edit the file in text mode, done whatever else I needed to do, logged out and moved on. But if I am going to sit for hours working on a task then the overhead of starting tramp is insignificant and the benefits you mention of multiple buffers and so forth work out in favor of doing that instead. > Similarly, you can have many remote shell buffers as well. That > works very good for me. Hey, I even read PDF files and view images > on remote machines using TRAMPed dired, doc-view, and image-mode. That is all perfectly understandable and reasonable for the types of tasks that you are doing. But not everyone has the same work to do. Other tasks require other work flows. For example I can't recall a time that I have ever looked at a pdf document on a remote machine that I had logged into remotely to do some system administration work. That case of having pdf documentation to which I would need to refer to would just would never occur. I would always be looking at those types of documents locally on my desktop. And would also have the web available for better documentation. In a different venue some people would suggest using sshfs to mount a remote system in a local userland filesystem. Then all remote files appear to be local. At the end of the task the filesystem can be unmounted. That is yet another different way of working that works quite well. Bob