emacs vs vs.net

emacs vs vs.net

[William Shieh]

hi,

i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of the time is win32.
could someone give me some example why emacs is so powerful? from what i
could see is that it takes more key to do a simple copy and paste than
notepad. i know notepad is probably not a good example, however, can anyone
give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net from ms?

thanks,
gs

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "William Shieh" <gwshieh@hotmail.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 18:13:43 -0800
> 
> i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of the time is win32.
> could someone give me some example why emacs is so powerful?

Because it's infinitely customizable (that is, you can change its
default behavior in many ways that are unimaginable with other similar
software), and has lots of powerful features that allow you to do
almost anything you can think of.

> from what i could see is that it takes more key to do a simple copy
> and paste than notepad.

How so?  Emacs supports the same paradigm for copy/paste as any other
GUI program: mark the text to be copied with the mouse, then click the
mouse's right button at the destination.  Doesn't this work for you?

> can anyone give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net
> from ms?

One good reason is that Emacs is available on almost any platform out
there, not only on Windows.  Another good reason is that Emacs has
packages bundled with it that allow you to do things beyond anything
vs.net could ever have.  Like email, for example (I read your message
and am typing this response in Emacs).  Yet another good reason is
that Emacs is free software, so you can study the sources, understand
how it works much better than any docs could ever describe, and fix
any bug/misfeature without being at the mercy of the vendor.

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Micah Cowan]

"William Shieh" <gwshieh@hotmail.com> writes:

> hi,
> 
> i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of the time is win32.
> could someone give me some example why emacs is so powerful? from what i
> could see is that it takes more key to do a simple copy and paste than
> notepad.

I doubt that. AIUI, in most environments, simply selecting a region of
text should *automatically* place it in the kill-ring, and
hitting the middle mouse button (or for you more likely:
"chording" the left and right mouse buttons) should paste it in
spot. This is significantly *less* work than most other text
editors (though it's standard for UNIX-style systems). If the
chording doesn't do it, control-y will. In the very worst of
circumstances (but still assuming a windowed environment), you
might have to select the region and then hit alt-w before it gets
into the kill-ring, but I really doubt it: and even then, that's
no more keystrokes than in Notepad.

> i know notepad is probably not a good example, however, can anyone
> give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net from ms?

Apart from the fact that VS.net doesn't produce ELF binaries for
GNU/Linux? ;-)

It's so very, *very* customizable! ...And if there's something I
don't like about it, if I dislike it enough to change it, then I
can!

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
micah@cowan.name

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Tim X]

>>>>> "William" == William Shieh <gwshieh@hotmail.com> writes:

 William> hi, i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of
 William> the time is win32.  could someone give me some example why
 William> emacs is so powerful? from what i could see is that it takes
 William> more key to do a simple copy and paste than notepad. i know
 William> notepad is probably not a good example, however, can anyone
 William> give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net
 William> from ms?

Don't know what vs.net is, but I avoid MS based mail clients simply to
avoid virus problems. 

Most people go for emacs because, rather than having to adjust how you
want to do things to fit with the software, emacs makes it easy to
adjust the software to work the way you want. I also hate using a
mouse as I find it slower than using keyboard shortcuts. To mark a
region, copy and past, you simply move to the beginning of the region,
hit ctrl-space move to the end of the region, hit alt-w (for copy) or
ctl-w (to cut), move to where you want to paste and hit ctl-y. Add in
the shortcuts to move by word/sentence/sexp/paragraph etc and moving
from begining of the region to the end is quick and easy. If you don't
like alt-w/ctl-w ctl-y etc, you can re-bind them. 

The power of emacs is in the reference to it being an "extensible"
editor - e.g. you can pretty much add whatever functionality you have
the imagination to create (via elisp etc). In practice, you can get by
with very little elisp skill as more often than not, the feature you
want has already been created by someone else and made available on
the net.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you 
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!

emacs vs vs.net

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

>>>>> "WS" == William Shieh <gwshieh@hotmail.com> writes:

WS> hi,
WS> i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of the time is win32.
WS> could someone give me some example why emacs is so powerful?

I think I'll write a speech sooner or later about this.

You use Win32, true ?

Each time  you have to  work on a  different type of source  (or text)
Windows  people tends  to use  a different  tool. Each  tool  does one
thing.  Each  tool has its own  interface (CUA -common  user access, a
standard for user interfaces - can do little, even between MS Visual C
ide  and MS  Visual Basic  ide differences  are heavy).  All  the tool
ignore the others.

And finally, even if you have some hook to extend the tool the process
is anything but easy.

CUA  itself offers  a  quite minimal  set  of operation.  Move of  one
character, word or line. Copy a region or paste.

Emacs  has a  much  richer set  of  commands.  Cut&Paste  is not  more
difficult  than with  CUA  interface  even if  the  keystrokes can  be
different.

And  you have  paragraph  oriented moving  and  selecting (for  text),
function oriented moving and selecting (for programs)

But while  Emacs can get CUA  compliant (even if CUA  standard is much
younger than  Emacs) while a CUA  editor can't get  more commands than
those shipped within.

Emacs  power comes  from being  a programmable  editor. Each  time you
press a key there's a function invoked under the hood.

Therefore, for  each new kind of  source there'll be some  new code (a
mode) that  will deal with  that source with  indentation, highligting
and even more: java oriented JDEE can do such things like creating the
skeletons of  the functions to  implement an interface, or  insert the
import statement for a certain class whose name is under the cursor.

And another thing.

Emacs is  large and Emacs  become the editor  of choice even  for such
things  like writing usenet  posts and  e-mail messages,  it's editing
command  are very  powerful (you  can transpose  two character  or two
words  with a  simple  keystroke). But  it  goes a  litte further.  It
_reads_ usenet and  e-mail, so that you have not  to use two different
programs.

Emacs reads  and writes files on  remote machines using  either ftp or
ssh.

Emacs can be a www browser. One of the few friendly with blind people.

Tell the same for Internet  Exploder that sometimes is unfriendly with
the most skilled user :)

 /\            ___
/___/\__|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_____________________
  //--\ | | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamico e fancazzista 
\/

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

>>>>> "MC" == Micah Cowan <micah@cowan.name> writes:

MC> I doubt that. AIUI, in most environments, simply selecting a region of
MC> text should *automatically* place it in the kill-ring, and
MC> hitting the middle mouse button (or for you more likely:
MC> "chording" the left and right mouse buttons) should paste it in
MC> spot.

Emacs under Win32 does this while Visual Studio doesn't. 

I forgot  to quote that there's  an extension to Visual  C++ that lets
you use Emacs as an Editor.  I think that writing the required DLL was
not easy.

MC> Apart from the fact that VS.net doesn't produce ELF binaries for
MC> GNU/Linux? ;-)

Go mono :) (http://www.go-mono.org)

 /\            ___
/___/\__|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_____________________
  //--\ | | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamico e fancazzista 
\/

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Henrik Enberg]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:

>> From: "William Shieh" <gwshieh@hotmail.com>

>> from what i could see is that it takes more key to do a simple copy
>> and paste than notepad.
>
> How so?  Emacs supports the same paradigm for copy/paste as any other
> GUI program: mark the text to be copied with the mouse, then click the
> mouse's right button at the destination.  Doesn't this work for you?

I think most windows programs don't have this feature.  It's one of the
things that annoys me the most every time I end up in front of a windows
computer anyway.

-- 
Vaya Con Satan

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Stefan Monnier]

> give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net from ms?

Emacs is the only way to salvation.
All other editors have been planted by the devil to tempt you.


        Stefan

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   however, can anyone give me a good reason why you use emacs instead
   of vs.net from ms?

Because Emacs is Free Software, and as such gives you the freedom to:
run the program for whatever purpose, study the program, redistribute
it, and improve it.

Cheers.

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[kgold]

There are two questions - using emacs for email and comparing it to
Notepad.

For email, I will admit that, if all you want to do is read email,
there are probably better choices than emacs.  But, if you want to
write as well, most email clients have very primitive Notepad type
editors.

Now compared to Notepad, both have simple copy, cut and paste.  I
prefer emacs, where you can do the entire operation using the mouse,
to Notepad's "mark with the mouse, copy with the keyboard, move with
the mouse, paste with the keyboard."  If you like continuously
switching between the keyboard and mouse, you'll like Notepad.

Beyond cut and paste, Notepad flops.  In emacs you can move the cursor
by word, sentence, paragraph, etc.  You can transpose letters or
words, capitalize, uppercase or lowercase a word, define and run
macros, split the screen, run a spell checker, do language
translation, enter accented characters, and infinite undo.

emacs really shines when you go beyond email, as it understands
various programming languages, so it eases program entry and
compilation.  It hooks easily to debuggers and source control servers.

Finally, it runs on Windows, Mac, and Unix, so it's learn once - use
everywhere.

And it's free.

And you get free support.

"William Shieh" <gwshieh@hotmail.com> writes:
> 
> i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of the time is win32.
> could someone give me some example why emacs is so powerful? from what i
> could see is that it takes more key to do a simple copy and paste than
> notepad. i know notepad is probably not a good example, however, can anyone
> give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net from ms?


-- 

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Jason Earl]

kgold@watson.ibm.com (kgold) writes:

> There are two questions - using emacs for email
> and comparing it to Notepad.
>
> For email, I will admit that, if all you want to
> do is read email, there are probably better
> choices than emacs.  But, if you want to write
> as well, most email clients have very primitive
> Notepad type editors.

Actually, if you read a *lot* of email, then Emacs
probably would be helpful as well.  Gnus has all
sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of
email, and the fact that you never have to take
your hands off of the keyboard to get everything
done makes a big difference.

> Now compared to Notepad, both have simple copy,
> cut and paste.  I prefer emacs, where you can do
> the entire operation using the mouse, to
> Notepad's "mark with the mouse, copy with the
> keyboard, move with the mouse, paste with the
> keyboard."  If you like continuously switching
> between the keyboard and mouse, you'll like
> Notepad.

Once you get used to how Emacs cuts and pastes you
will begin to wonder why Microsoft never stole
that particular idea.

> Beyond cut and paste, Notepad flops.  In emacs
> you can move the cursor by word, sentence,
> paragraph, etc.  You can transpose letters or
> words, capitalize, uppercase or lowercase a
> word, define and run macros, split the screen,
> run a spell checker, do language translation,
> enter accented characters, and infinite undo.

Not to mention the fact that Emacs will
intelligently reflow pargraphs (including ones
with multiple layers of quotes).

     1. And it always seems to "do the right thing
        when creating paragraphs or lists

     2. See, creating neat lists in plain text is
        easy with emacs.

Plus there are all sorts of nifty toys like boxquote

,----[ Look at me ]
| This is a test
`----

or zippy...

"DARK SHADOWS" is on!!  Hey, I think the VAMPIRE
forgot his UMBRELLA!!

> emacs really shines when you go beyond email, as
> it understands various programming languages, so
> it eases program entry and compilation.  It
> hooks easily to debuggers and source control
> servers.

Exactly.  All of the Emacs tips and tricks that you
learn writing email or posting to newsgroups are
also available to you when you are hacking or
writing a document (in LaTeX, of course).

> Finally, it runs on Windows, Mac, and Unix, so
> it's learn once - use everywhere.

Another excellent point.

> And it's free.
> 
> And you get free support.

What's more, Emacs is fun.

Jason

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Vagn Johansen]

Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net> writes:

> Actually, if you read a *lot* of email, then Emacs
> probably would be helpful as well.  Gnus has all
> sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of
> email, and the fact that you never have to take
> your hands off of the keyboard to get everything
> done makes a big difference.
>

What tools are those?

Gnus does support searching in multiple groups.

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Vagn Johansen]

Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:

> Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net> writes:
>
>> Actually, if you read a *lot* of email, then Emacs
>> probably would be helpful as well.  Gnus has all
>> sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of
>> email, and the fact that you never have to take
>> your hands off of the keyboard to get everything
>> done makes a big difference.
>
> What tools are those?
>
> Gnus does support searching in multiple groups.

That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple groups."

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Jason Earl]

Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:

> Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net> writes:
>>
>>> Actually, if you read a *lot* of email, then Emacs
>>> probably would be helpful as well.  Gnus has all
>>> sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of
>>> email, and the fact that you never have to take
>>> your hands off of the keyboard to get everything
>>> done makes a big difference.
>>
>> What tools are those?
>>
>> Gnus does support searching in multiple groups.
>
> That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple
> groups."

For searching I use find and grep :).

I wade through hundreds of emails a day (not counting spam).  For me
the biggest advantages of Gnus over other email clients I have used is
the ability to quickly skim through groups without having to touch the
mouse.  'k' will kill useless threads, space will page through a
message 'A n' adds a task to my planner.el files (with a link to the
message in question).  Lately I have been thinking about adding in
Remembrance agent http://www.remem.org/ to the mix.

    The Remembrance Agent (Remem) is an Emacs plug-in that watches
    over your shoulder and suggests information relevant to what
    you're reading or writing. While search engines help with direct
    recall, Remem is a tool for associative memory. Suggested
    documents are displayed in a buffer at the bottom of your Emacs
    window, and are updated every few seconds based on the last
    hundred or so words surrounding the cursor.

I suppose if I used my inbox as a knowledge base I might be more
interested in searching.  Even so, Gnus has some pretty compelling
tools.

Jason

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Jesper Harder]

Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:

> Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net> writes:
>>
>>> Gnus has all sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of
>>> email
>>
>> What tools are those?
>
> That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple
> groups."

Google for "nnir".  It's now also included in the contrib directory of
cvs Gnus.

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Vagn Johansen]

Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net> writes:

> Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple
>> groups."
>
> For searching I use find and grep :).

Well, then all mail readers that store mail messages as text files
".. has all sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of email" (as
you write).

> I wade through hundreds of emails a day (not counting spam).  For me
> the biggest advantages of Gnus over other email clients I have used is
> the ability to quickly skim through groups without having to touch the
> mouse.  'k' will kill useless threads, space will page through a
> message 'A n' adds a task to my planner.el files (with a link to the
> message in question).  

I have been looking for a way of creating a "task" (with reminder) based
on a gnus message, but have not found anything useful yet. I tried
nndiary, but could not get it working. 

I tried planner.el but it did not seem to be able to give a good overview
of added tasks ("A n"). I will look at it a bit further.

> Lately I have been thinking about adding in
> Remembrance agent http://www.remem.org/ to the mix.

I used the Remembrance Agent for a short period a few years back. I did
not have it running all the time, I just activated it to perform a search
in some of my text files. It was written in C, so it was not easy to add
support for new file types. That is probably why I gave up using it.

> I suppose if I used my inbox as a knowledge base I might be more
> interested in searching.  Even so, Gnus has some pretty compelling
> tools.

I don't consider find and grep to be Gnus tools, if that is what you mean.

All my emails are a knowledge base along with a lot of small text files I
write. I am planning to convert my text files into emacs-wiki files for
easier navigation.

Searching is important to me, that is why I am working on my own search
software to search Gnus mails and a lot of other file types: txt, html,
mp3, doc, etc.

I tried nnir.el/swish but that is very primitive. Even Outlook Express is
a lot better. (In fairness: swish *does* create an index, so it very fast).

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Juri Linkov]

Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:
> Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net> writes:
>> Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:
>>> That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple
>>> groups."
>>
>> For searching I use find and grep :).
>
> Well, then all mail readers that store mail messages as text files
> ".. has all sorts of tools for plowing through huge piles of email" (as
> you write).

Still, find and grep are useless if mail readers store mail messages
in quoted-printable or base64 formats.

> All my emails are a knowledge base along with a lot of small text files I
> write. I am planning to convert my text files into emacs-wiki files for
> easier navigation.
>
> Searching is important to me, that is why I am working on my own search
> software to search Gnus mails and a lot of other file types: txt, html,
> mp3, doc, etc.

Searching is only one type of application for knowledge processing.
Another type is category-based directories (most famous types of
these applications are Google and Yahoo).  While searching is more
easy to use, however, it often produces less relevant results than
those that can be found in manually created indexes.  I think that
category-based directories are more useful for personal information
indexing because of their manageable size.  I am working now on the
Emacs package that organizes personal information into categories and
displays them under different views.

-- 
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/ee/

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Per Abrahamsen]

Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:

> That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple groups."

nnvirtual, nnkiboze

Not that I have ever gotten nnkiboze to work, but I use nnvirtual
every day. 

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Vagn Johansen]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> That should have been "Gnus does NOT support searching in multiple groups."
>
> nnvirtual, nnkiboze
>
> Not that I have ever gotten nnkiboze to work, but I use nnvirtual
> every day. 

They kinda work, but in a painful way.

nnvirtual seems to require a summary buffer with *all* emails to work.  I
tried with address "^nnml:" (1000 mails in total). I have to do C-u RET
in the group buffer to get M-s to work (is there another way?). Obviously
this does not scale. Is it possible to get a summary buffer with just the
matches?

nnkiboze can generate a summary with just the "matches" but it has
cumbersome UI for creating the group. The manual says you have to run M-x
nnkiboze-generate-groups after creating the group. This started a lengthy
"nntp get ...k" operation even though my address was "^nnml:" (bug?). I
used C-g, but the summary buffer had the correct matches anyway. 

Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Kai Grossjohann]

Vagn Johansen <gonz808@hotmail.com> writes:

> I tried nnir.el/swish but that is very primitive. Even Outlook
> Express is a lot better. (In fairness: swish *does* create an index,
> so it very fast).

Please help making nnir.el better!  I had this weird idea and then I
tried it to see whether it would work, and that's about where nnir.el
stopped its evolution.

Then people came and offered lots of nifty extensions for supporting
other search engines.

And now you have all those extensions resting on a weak foundation.

I wish I had the time to improve the foundation, but I don't.  I wish
somebody would help strengthen the foundation.  Some day I might get a
round tuit...

Kai