Re: Open Hypspec with w3m

[Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org>]

Thank you (again) very much for responding.

On Sun, Jan 30 2011, Tim X wrote:

[...]

> It never does any harm to ask for pointers and suggestion in this
> group.  There are a number of regulars in this group, like Stefan, who
> are active contributors/maintainers of emacs. They have both a wealth
> of information and are aware of current development/improvements in
> emacs.

I really do appreciate the pointers.

[...]

> Note that emacs also has a cl compatibility package (require 'cl). It is
> not a 100% cl compatibility layer, but does bring in some of the useful
> cl functions that are not part of standard elisp. This can be very
> handy. However, you do need to be careful as there are significant
> differences between elisp and cl (I use to constantly get confused!). 
>
> Practicle common lisp is a good text. I also found Paradigms of
> Artificial Intelligence really good (don't be put off by the reference
> to AI, it has a lot of really good lisp stuff). ANSI Common Lisp is
> also quite good and while it took a couple of goes, On Lisp is really
> good once you get to the point where you want to start getting to
> grips with macros in a serious manner. Although somewhat criticised, I
> also found Let Over Lambda an interesting read.

Thanks for the advice.  It certainly does help to know what to study
next.

[...]

>> I hate to admit it, but I basically use Emacs because it was basically
>> the only tool around when I first started using Linux.  I got used to
>> it, and even for pure end users it is a pretty impressive tool.  Now
>> that I am beginning to see it as a learning tool/development environment
>> I am a little surprised it is not more popular ;).
>>
>
> Yes. A similar situation. I came from vi to emacs (I started with old
> Unix systems long before Linux). However, due to some bad luck, I lost
> my sight and at the time (mid 90s) the only good interface on Linux
> for blind users was emacs and an extension package called emacspeak,
> which uses defadvice a lot to add speech support. The learning curve
> was very steep at first and emacs seemed very alien compared to the
> vi. However now I am very much at home with it. Last year, after over
> 15 years, I was lucky enough to get a considerable amount of sigh
> back, but even though I could go back to using vi, I've been totally
> sucked in by the power and flexibility of emacs.

I am glad that you got (most of) your sight back.  I want to use phrases
like eye-opening or enlightening, but I do not want you to think that I
am making the obvious bad pun.

> There are frequent arguments/debates in this group regarding emacs'
> failure as an IDE. I think the critics are possibly missing the main
> point. While other IDEs, like eclipse or visual studio etc, may offer
> lots of great features and do so pretty much out of the box, you still
> need to very much structure your workflow to fit the tool. For me,
> emacs has the advantage of allowing me to structure the tool to fit
> with my preferred workflow, plus I can do most of my development
> related tasks which are not strictly speaking coding, with it as
> well. I find the combination of org-mode, the various development
> modes, vcs, w3m and mail all being within one tool, emacs, incredibly
> useful.  I have built up a toolbox of handy and useful bits of elisp
> and collected even more from posts to this and other groups. I really
> like the fact that all my important stuff is in plain text format and
> managed under version control. For the last year or so, I've been
> making increasing use of org-mode. It has revolutionised how I work
> . A mode I cannot recommend highly enough for any emacs user.

I have high hopes that with the inclusion of CEDET that Emacs can start
making progress on the IDE front.  I basically feel the same way about
Emacs as you do.  I've used Eclipse and Netbeans, and I did not like
them, even for Java development.  Sure, there were some things that they
did *much* better than Emacs, but mostly they just seemed to get in the
way.

I've played a bit with CEDET's EDE, however, and it was definitely cool
to build Autoconf projects from Emacs.  Eventually I really would like
to be able to help move things forward.

Jason