Re: Baby Emacs?

[pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)]

Rugxulo <rugxulo@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Jul 31, 12:51 pm, kj <no.em...@please.post> wrote:
>>
>> I am teaching programming to a few co-workers (research biologists).
>> Most of them want some recommendation for a text editor.  Of course,
>> I recommend to them Emacs, but I would prefer to recommend a simpler
>> version of Emacs, one with fewer features, and also fewer ways to
>> get confused.  Is there such a thing?
>>
>> (A different co-worker suggested nano, but it does not look
>> sufficiently Emacs-like to me.)
>>
>> TIA!
>
> GNU Emacs is definitely superior to the lighter versions, but it also
> takes a lot more space. However, it seems portability is getting less
> and less for it. In other words, it really depends on what OS you use,
> what features you need, etc.
>
> Small Emacs? Try one of the following:  mg2a, MicroEmacs, JASSPA
> MicroEmacs (or NanoEmacs for the ultra simplistic), ZILE, JED, or even
> Digital Mars' very weird offshoot of MicroEmacs. However, in all
> honesty, I would only truly recommend those if you don't need UTF-8
> (although JED does sorta have it now). I don't think GNU Emacs will
> confuse them very much, and it does do a lot more (including
> emulations for other editors if needed)! Also, JOE doesn't really
> count but can mimic Emacs a bit in keypresses.

The keypresses are the less interesting thing in emacs.
That's why all these clones are useless.

There's no point in trying to learn emacs keychords, if you don't get
in return the power of emacs lisp programming.  Better stick with a
GUI editor.  There are some 'good' ones.

On the other hand, if you can teach them how to _configure_ and
_parameterize_ emacs with that 'emacs scripting' stuff, you'll win.

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__