From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Mathias Dahl Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: Re: Emacs: a 21st century text-editor Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 10:32:38 +0100 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1110364815 10410 80.91.229.2 (9 Mar 2005 10:40:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:40:15 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Mar 09 11:40:14 2005 Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1D8ybd-0002hT-Nb for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 11:39:58 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1D8ymg-00004t-5w for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 05:51:23 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1D8xp2-0003o7-Ce for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:49:44 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1D8xp0-0003nO-UV for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:49:43 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1D8xoz-0003hf-OK for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:49:41 -0500 Original-Received: from [193.4.58.12] (helo=horus.isnic.is) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (TLSv1:DES-CBC3-SHA:168) (Exim 4.34) id 1D8xYa-00064k-Rc for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:32:45 -0500 Original-Received: from Mail.FU-Berlin.DE (mail.fu-berlin.de [130.133.1.2]) by horus.isnic.is (8.12.9p2/8.12.9/isnic) with ESMTP id j299WfuC079582 for ; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 09:32:41 GMT (envelope-from mod-submit@uni-berlin.de) Original-Received: from curry.zedat.fu-berlin.de ([160.45.10.36]) by Mail.FU-Berlin.DE (Exim 4.42) for gnu-emacs-bug@moderators.isc.org with esmtp id <1D8xYW-000O3Y-EK>; Wed, 09 Mar 2005 10:32:40 +0100 Original-Received: by Curry.ZEDAT.FU-Berlin.DE (Smail3.2.0.98) from news.uni-berlin.de with bsmtp id ; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:32:40 +0100 (MET) Original-To: gnu-emacs-bug@moderators.isc.org Original-Path: individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug Original-Lines: 71 X-Orig-X-Trace: individual.net NL8oJM6eFzGmmCxtAjYGIgtljwG+hN4w5PdUWFKcyRonO+zAgp User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/21.3.50 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:PvXqhz+oEgSm3DzbQYnCJ/XGmqE= X-BeenThere: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org X-MailScanner-To: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.bugs:10891 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bugs:10891 "Christopher G D Tipper" writes: > It just seems to be stuck in the 20th century with no sign of any > attempt at modernisation. Although I agree somewhat I think you are a bit unfair. Lately it has got some nie-looking tool bar, the file dialog when accessed from the menu bar is quite good (at least on Windows), etc. > 1 Text-wrapping. Text wrapping is a limitation, and it would be nice > to scroll past the edge of the screen. This is particularly acute in > my case editing XSLT scripts where line-breaks become a > presentational issue. Sometimes I actually need to compose documents > with 250 columns, and I don't appreciate emacs telling me otherwise. Have you tried Ctrl-PgDown and Ctrl-PgUp? Works quite well. I too miss a horizontal scroll bar sometimes though. > 2 Shell open. Emacs really ought to be able recognise when the shell > is requesting it to open a file. Gnu-client should be unnecessary in > a modern application. I agree with this and I really do not understand why it should be that hard to "feel" if an Emacs instance is allready running, and opening the file in that. But I am no low-level programmer, so I would not know about technical limitations here. > 3 Tabbed buffers. Open buffers should be easily visible in a tabbed > layout below the menu, in the manner of XEmacs. A proper history > list would help here so that documents are persistent across > sessions. Personally, that tab-bar would be so crowded that the tabs would not do any good. I tend to have many files and buffers open, especially since emacs is more than a text editor for me (reading news, mail, todolists, calendar etc etc). Btw, have you tried out tabbar.el? I don't like it, but you might. Persistent files though sessions is solved in many ways (desktop.el is built in in emacs). > 4 File Dialogs. I use dlgopen.el on Windows, which gets rid of the > most serious interface issue of all, the lack of modern file > dialogs. It wouldn't be rocket-science to adapt the interface to > support this. XEmacs file dialogs are unusable IMHO. On Windows, File -> Open File... works for me. I like to open the files using the minibuffer though. > 5 Paste replaces edit. This idea that when I paste I end up with > both the replacement text and the old text does not belong in the > modern idiom. This is a real versioning issue when the replacement > text scrolls past the bottom of the screen. I think this is just an > old-fashioned feature that never got updated. I used to like this. I used pc-selection-mode and delete-selection-mode, which you will probably like, but nowadays I have turned all that off. I do not even use transient-mark-mode. I have got used to do C-SPC (set-mark-command), move the cursor to the end of the region I want to operate on, and to C-w, M-w, delete-region (which I have mapped to C-c d). And I like it. For deleting words or lines, I use M-d, C-k etc. Basically I see where you are coming from, but by being a bit flexible and accepting some "old quirks" (which seems to be really thought through when you get used to it), I like it the way it works. Just because something is not familiar does not meen that it is bad. IMHO, of course... :) /Mathias