From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Daniel Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Failing to see the allure of Emacs Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:26:06 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1273056491 28466 80.91.229.12 (5 May 2010 10:48:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 10:48:11 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed May 05 12:48:10 2010 connect(): No such file or directory 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 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O9c9C-0000yH-06 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 05 May 2010 12:48:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:48480 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O9c9B-0000Ys-3J for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 05 May 2010 06:48:09 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!t20g2000yqe.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 52 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.247.237.158 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1269206766 19658 127.0.0.1 (21 Mar 2010 21:26:06 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:26:06 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: t20g2000yqe.googlegroups.com; posting-host=140.247.237.158; posting-account=J_rboAoAAAD3aFlQS_0lyR1POAjQoPF4 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:177523 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Tue, 04 May 2010 16:48:25 -0400 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:73365 Archived-At: Thanks for all the help! Any other nuggets I'd really appreciate. The entire impetus for looking into emacs is b/c the programmers that I really am in awe of seem to really use it. These days everywhere you turn there's a new GUI or language to learn, and I want to make sure that emacs will ultimately lessen the number of things that I need to learn in the future. On Mar 21, 5:00=A0pm, "akai...@visi.com" wrote: > Daniel, emacs is a superb text editor; for why that is, you can either ta= ke > everyone's opinion or you can go to some 1970's and 1980's-era studies of > the ergonomics and cognitive demands of text editing. =A0Simply put, emac= s > gets it. =A0Most other editors only halfway get it. > > But to see what's so superb about emacs you must get to know its > extraordinarily powerful macro facility and its programmability. =A0emacs > incorporates an entire programming environment which can control everythi= ng > it can do and every datatype it can handle -- subprocesses, windows, > sockets, lists, numbers, arrays, strings (which are vectors), etc. =A0Onc= e > you can get your hands on that -- and I doubt you can do it in only 48 > hours -- you'll never want to go back. > > Let's say you're proficient with bash. =A0Okay: with emacs you can run a = bash > subshell and write macros and programs that can operate on the bash shell > environment in relationship to things you're doing in multiple other > windows and multiple other buffers. =A0emacs can do this in your choice o= f > character set. > > I wouldn't call myself an emacs guru, but I've been using it for 30 years= , > and although I've tried out other editors, none of them compares to emacs > in terms of power, flexibility, and programmability. =A0When I find one t= hat > can, I'll switch to it, but by now that seems unlikely. =A0In those areas > emacs doesn't just occupy the high ground: it owns the whole damned mount= ain. > > djc > > PS I find that for my purposes emacs falls short in two areas: the abilit= y > to handle arbitrarily large files efficiently, and documentation. =A0How = I'd > love to see complete, up to date, readily usable documentation! =A0If tha= t > existed, this newsgroup would see less traffic.