From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs vs. TextMate (not trying to start an editor war) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:29:34 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <8f5e7835-91fb-4f34-a913-f08f9762301b@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1215679256 5092 80.91.229.12 (10 Jul 2008 08:40:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:40:56 +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 Jul 10 10:41:42 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KGria-0001Wj-MA for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:41:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:37559 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KGrhj-0000tA-1g for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:40:43 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 69 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.6.97.120 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1215678575 11358 127.0.0.1 (10 Jul 2008 08:29:35 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:29:35 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com; posting-host=24.6.97.120; posting-account=bRPKjQoAAACxZsR8_VPXCX27T2YcsyMA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.22, gzip(gfe), gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:160026 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:55375 Archived-At: You might try html-helper-mode. I don't think it'll beat any major editor that does html, but it somewhat helps because by default it does syntax coloring various langs that are used together with html. I think fact that emacs doesn't by default support today's practical need for html coding (often mixed with javascript, css, php, asp, jsp codes), is a major problem with emacs. Web dev is probably the largest segment in the programing industry. Adding injury to the wound is that a good percentage of web developers, possibly majority, are entry level programers who codes html/css/php. These people, when they took a look at emacs, they laugh, and rightfully so. (emacs's obscure interface, keystrokes, terminologies, made it worse) (of course emacs fans will tell you about several elisp code on the web there that does multi modes... but the sheer fact to shop around, install, get them to work is a pain and rather not trivial. for those interested, see http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/MultipleMod= es ) I think to have emacs work with today's web dev needs out of the box is one of the most important need for emacs. (see http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_of_elisp.html ) Even for working with pure static html pages, emacs's default html mode is quite lacking. The default html mode in emacs 22 (released in 2007), is at a level of ~1998's commercial html editors. (of course emacs has redeeming qualities, i.e. its elisp system and all, that keeps us still sticking with emacs) Web development is my primary area of expertise. I have to work with html mixed with css, javascript, php, perl a lot. Fortunately, lacking proper syntax coloring isn't much problem. (after all, 99.99% web pages out there are so badly formed) One trick i do when i need proper syntax coloring, is just to switch to that lang's mode. For example, if i'm working in a php segment, i just switch to php mode. You can assign single-press keys to switch to different modes. One could guess why emacs doesn't have a robust mode for working with today's html. My guess is that it's a bit hard to write such a =E2=80=9Cmix= ed=E2=80=9D mode possibly due to emacs infrastructure for modes, and of course because there are relatively very few emacs developers, and there's not a good tutorial on how to write a emacs mode (it involves quite a lot elisp knowledge in several areas. I'm currently picking it up and hope to write a tutorial soon). Xah =E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/ =E2=98=84 On Jul 9, 11:10 pm, Cezar Halmagean wrote: > Hello, > > I have been using emacs for the past 5 years or so and I've recently > stumbled upon TextMate. I love the way TextMate handles *web modes* > like integration of html + javascript + css in the same file and > I've always had a problem doing that in emacs. > > I wonder what's the problem, why has an editor like TextMate gone so > far in just a few years and Emacs is still not there yet. > > Regards, > Cezar