Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

On 2023-09-20 at 10:21+02:00, Csepp wrote:
> It's better if we have at least one *well documented* developer setup,
> than if we have a bunch of (sometimes conflicting) partial docs
> for setting up certain subsystems.
>
> Emacs can be pretty good, once you do (setq make-defaults-not-suck 1)
> a bunch of times.

Or even more outrageous, an overriden Emacs package
with all the good stuff for Guix development.
We already have guix shell that spawns a shell
and guix edit that spawns an editor, why no guix boot
that spawns an OS^W^W Emacs with appropriate defaults?

Disclaimer: I use the devil editor that goes by the number
of VI VI VI, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[MSavoritias]

On 9/20/23 11:45, Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the 
GNU System distribution. wrote:
> On 2023-09-20 at 10:21+02:00, Csepp wrote:
>> It's better if we have at least one *well documented* developer setup,
>> than if we have a bunch of (sometimes conflicting) partial docs
>> for setting up certain subsystems.
>>
>> Emacs can be pretty good, once you do (setq make-defaults-not-suck 1)
>> a bunch of times.
> Or even more outrageous, an overriden Emacs package
> with all the good stuff for Guix development.
> We already have guix shell that spawns a shell
> and guix edit that spawns an editor, why no guix boot
> that spawns an OS^W^W Emacs with appropriate defaults?
>
> Disclaimer: I use the devil editor that goes by the number
> of VI VI VI, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
>

Can't the guile editor be that?

It kind of tries to be already. We just need to promote it and dogfood 
it more.


MSavoritias

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Ricardo Wurmus]

MSavoritias <email@msavoritias.me> writes:

> On 9/20/23 11:45, Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the
> GNU System distribution. wrote:
>> On 2023-09-20 at 10:21+02:00, Csepp wrote:
>>> It's better if we have at least one *well documented* developer setup,
>>> than if we have a bunch of (sometimes conflicting) partial docs
>>> for setting up certain subsystems.
>>>
>>> Emacs can be pretty good, once you do (setq make-defaults-not-suck 1)
>>> a bunch of times.
>> Or even more outrageous, an overriden Emacs package
>> with all the good stuff for Guix development.
>> We already have guix shell that spawns a shell
>> and guix edit that spawns an editor, why no guix boot
>> that spawns an OS^W^W Emacs with appropriate defaults?
>>
>> Disclaimer: I use the devil editor that goes by the number
>> of VI VI VI, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
>>
>
> Can't the guile editor be that?
>
> It kind of tries to be already. We just need to promote it and dogfood
> it more.

Do you mean Guile Studio?[1]

It was really only intended to be a pre-configured editor for new
Guilers, which is why it includes the picture language and Geiser with
picture display.

But as I wrote there

   There are many more things that can be done to make Emacs less
   confusing for people who use it just as a Guile IDE. I would be happy
   to hear your suggestions or apply patches to improve Guile Studio!

This is still true today.

[1]: https://elephly.net/guile-studio/

-- 
Ricardo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[MSavoritias]

On 9/20/23 17:03, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> MSavoritias <email@msavoritias.me> writes:
>
>> On 9/20/23 11:45, Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the
>> GNU System distribution. wrote:
>>> On 2023-09-20 at 10:21+02:00, Csepp wrote:
>>>> It's better if we have at least one *well documented* developer setup,
>>>> than if we have a bunch of (sometimes conflicting) partial docs
>>>> for setting up certain subsystems.
>>>>
>>>> Emacs can be pretty good, once you do (setq make-defaults-not-suck 1)
>>>> a bunch of times.
>>> Or even more outrageous, an overriden Emacs package
>>> with all the good stuff for Guix development.
>>> We already have guix shell that spawns a shell
>>> and guix edit that spawns an editor, why no guix boot
>>> that spawns an OS^W^W Emacs with appropriate defaults?
>>>
>>> Disclaimer: I use the devil editor that goes by the number
>>> of VI VI VI, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
>>>
>> Can't the guile editor be that?
>>
>> It kind of tries to be already. We just need to promote it and dogfood
>> it more.
> Do you mean Guile Studio?[1]
>
> It was really only intended to be a pre-configured editor for new
> Guilers, which is why it includes the picture language and Geiser with
> picture display.
>
> But as I wrote there
>
>     There are many more things that can be done to make Emacs less
>     confusing for people who use it just as a Guile IDE. I would be happy
>     to hear your suggestions or apply patches to improve Guile Studio!
>
> This is still true today.
>
> [1]: https://elephly.net/guile-studio/
>
I did yeah. That's why i said we should promote it more to newcomers 
instead of plain Emacs.

I think guile and guix are close that it could easily be a guix-IDE too.


MSavoritias

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Andy Tai]

Hi, for some reason emacs has become the elephant in the room of the
discussion on contributing to guix.

Regardless of one's opinion of emacs, I just want to add that this is
itself strange.  I have contributed some (package definition) patches
to guix, all without using emacs.

I am not an emacs user, so emacs is not necessary for contributing to guix.
For what it's worth, the emacs-motif package in Guix was my addition.
I don't use it myself.

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Nathan Dehnel]

________________________________

>Hi, for some reason emacs has become the elephant in the room of the
discussion on contributing to guix.

>Regardless of one's opinion of emacs, I just want to add that this is
itself strange.  I have contributed some (package definition) patches
to guix, all without using emacs.

>I am not an emacs user, so emacs is not necessary for contributing to guix.
For what it's worth, the emacs-motif package in Guix was my addition.
I don't use it myself.

I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable), so I just use
kate instead, which isn't a great environment for me either. It has
rainbow parens, but it doesn't balance them, which is a hassle. I keep
using it though due to lack of time to browse through alternatives. I
heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
screwing around with it.

https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/lispforeveryone/
This is the only setup for coding in lisp that has actually looked
attractive to me. (Coding in wisp with colored blocks that transpiles
to s-expressions) Though I haven't had the time (and probably
expertise) to set it up for myself.

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Janneke Nieuwenhuizen]

Nathan Dehnel writes:

> I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable)

Emacs might be somewhat different from what you know, but this is utter
bollocks.

Switching to Emacs (from vi) took me three summers.  I kept trying
because I had seen how helpful it was, and well the statement that "the
GNU project will use it as its editor".

That was some 25y ago and it was time very well spent.  After I
switched, I taught it to my dad for his latex editing, who went on to
create patches for the Dutch tutorial because he wanted to give back
something..  If he could learn, most anyone should be able to pick it
up.

People are still indenting their code manually today, etc... it's
ridiculous.  Also, magit.

Greetings,
Janneke

-- 
Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>  | GNU LilyPond https://LilyPond.org
Freelance IT https://www.JoyOfSource.com | Avatar® https://AvatarAcademy.com

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[paul]

Dear Janneke,

On 9/23/23 09:37, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> Nathan Dehnel writes:
>
>> I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable)
> Emacs might be somewhat different from what you know, but this is utter
> bollocks.

Thank you for your opinion but it's just that: a subjective judgement 
based on your own episodic experience. Which is definitely valid but 
unrealistically shared by so many to be able to define Nathan's 
experience "utter bollocks".

I think this attitude (in my experience typical of GNU maintainers) 
where their way of doing computation is more blessed or holier or better 
sometimes really ruins the social interactions happening around Guix 
(which is the safest  community in the GNU project imho, probably also 
due to the distance they rightfully posed during the whole stallman drama).

It's especially problematic when people in power such as maintainers do 
not realize their role in the community. You have more power, probably 
due to your investment you have a clearer vision of where the project is 
going as well. You are supposed to be a role model for new users and 
contributors.

> If he could learn, most anyone should be able to pick it
> up.
> People are still indenting their code manually today, etc... it's
> ridiculous.
This behavior is not ok. Again, please, stop throwing your judgement on 
people. Potential users or contributors even.
> Also, magit.

I use Emacs, love magit, I used to use it daily also at $day_job on 
Windows because it's just so good, but I can assure you most of Git 
users never heard of it and live their life pretty happily.

giacomo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:

> heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
> and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
> screwing around with it.

M-x modus-themes-toggle RET

i.e. hold Alt, press x, then type “modus-themes-toggle” and hit the
return key.

We can add a little toggle button to Guile Studio that does this.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Janneke Nieuwenhuizen]

paul writes:

Dear Paul,

> On 9/23/23 09:37, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
>> Nathan Dehnel writes:
>>
>>> I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable)
>> Emacs might be somewhat different from what you know, but this is utter
>> bollocks.
>
> Thank you for your opinion but it's just that: a subjective judgement
> based on your own episodic experience.

I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
triggering old pain.

Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative anecdotes
about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter them with
positive anecdotes?

It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I deeply
regret: this has to stop.

Greetings,
Janneke

-- 
Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>  | GNU LilyPond https://LilyPond.org
Freelance IT https://www.JoyOfSource.com | Avatar® https://AvatarAcademy.com

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
>> and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
>> screwing around with it.
>
> M-x modus-themes-toggle RET
>
> i.e. hold Alt, press x, then type “modus-themes-toggle” and hit the
> return key.
>
> We can add a little toggle button to Guile Studio that does this.

To affect the context menu and menu bar you’d also need to do set the
GTK_THEME variable when starting Guile Studio, e.g.

    GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark guile-studio

I’ll try to change Guile Studio so that it will automatically pick the
dark or light variant of the theme dependent on system preferences, but
for now this is the workaround that should get you most of the way to a
dark theme.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
>> and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
>> screwing around with it.
>
> M-x modus-themes-toggle RET
>
> i.e. hold Alt, press x, then type “modus-themes-toggle” and hit the
> return key.
>
> We can add a little toggle button to Guile Studio that does this.

Actually, I just noticed that Guile Studio already tells you how to do
this in the help pane that is displayed on startup:

    Toggle between dark and light mode with F5.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Nathan Dehnel]

Oh, thank you, that's lovely.

On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 4:59 AM Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:
>
>
> Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
> > and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
> > screwing around with it.
>
> M-x modus-themes-toggle RET
>
> i.e. hold Alt, press x, then type “modus-themes-toggle” and hit the
> return key.
>
> We can add a little toggle button to Guile Studio that does this.
>
> --
> Ricardo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Nathan Dehnel]

>I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
triggering old pain.

>Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative anecdotes
about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter them with
positive anecdotes?

It was a mistake to say that. I felt the reflexive need to justify why
I don't use emacs, or else people would just tell me to use it anyways
as a result of talking about not knowing of a decent (alternative)
lisp editor.

>It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I deeply
regret: this has to stop.

I want to clarify that I'm not just repeating rumors and I actually
have tried to use emacs.

On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 5:00 AM Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> paul writes:
>
> Dear Paul,
>
> > On 9/23/23 09:37, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> >> Nathan Dehnel writes:
> >>
> >>> I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable)
> >> Emacs might be somewhat different from what you know, but this is utter
> >> bollocks.
> >
> > Thank you for your opinion but it's just that: a subjective judgement
> > based on your own episodic experience.
>
> I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
> triggering old pain.
>
> Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative anecdotes
> about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter them with
> positive anecdotes?
>
> It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
> starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I deeply
> regret: this has to stop.
>
> Greetings,
> Janneke
>
> --
> Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>  | GNU LilyPond https://LilyPond.org
> Freelance IT https://www.JoyOfSource.com | Avatar® https://AvatarAcademy.com

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Liliana Marie Prikler]

Am Sonntag, dem 24.09.2023 um 02:37 -0500 schrieb Nathan Dehnel:
> > I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
> > triggering old pain.
> 
> > Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative
> > anecdotes about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter
> > them with positive anecdotes?
> 
> It was a mistake to say that. I felt the reflexive need to justify
> why I don't use emacs, or else people would just tell me to use it
> anyways as a result of talking about not knowing of a decent
> (alternative) lisp editor.
I mean, you could try using it anyways, whether it's vanilla emacs,
customized emacs, guile studio, or the heavily popularized spacemacs,
doom, etc. variants.  On the Guix side, it doesn't really matter, our
configuration works with packages based on Emacs.

It's fine if you prefer another editor, but don't count on us to write
documentation for every editor out there, especially when it almost
always turns out to be invoking "guix edit" followed by "git commit …"
or perhaps using that editor's built-in VC integration to do so.  I'm
also not convinced you need to bring the big guns of lisp editing to
the table.  From personal experience, an editor that autocompletes the
closing bracket and has parentheses matching capabilities suffices. 
The latter is even implemented by crude tools such as gnome-text-
editor.

> > It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
> > starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I
> > deeply regret: this has to stop.
> 
> I want to clarify that I'm not just repeating rumors and I actually
> have tried to use emacs.
There is a wide span of "tried emacs".  I personally wouldn't say I've
"tried" vi after hitting ESC :q once and being done or even that I've
tried using ed after vaguely figuring out how you can make it actually
change the contents of a file.

Now whether you want to qualify your experience further or not is up to
you, and even if you do, your personal choice of a suitable editor
remains personal.  However, I don't think that repeating the age old
jokes of "herp derp, me no likes defaults" as has happened in other
branches of this topic is helpful.  *The defaults in Emacs do not
matter.*  You don't need to be happy with the editor you get out of the
box.  You can change it into the editor you want and there's ample
documentation on how to do so.  Coming full circle, this is why we
reference Emacs in the manual, enough people collaborated to suggest a
workflow that works for them or at least goes in the right direction. 
However, I think it's fair to say that most folks' setup will differ
ever so slightly from what is presented there.

Cheers

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Csepp]

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
>> and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
>> screwing around with it.
>
> M-x modus-themes-toggle RET
>
> i.e. hold Alt, press x, then type “modus-themes-toggle” and hit the
> return key.
>
> We can add a little toggle button to Guile Studio that does this.

Kinda tangential, but could Emacs be made to just use the system (GTK)
theme?
(In general there are a looot of places where Emacs should just stop
doing its own thing and properly integrate with the system services and
settings.)

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Csepp <raingloom@riseup.net> writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:
>
>> Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
>>> and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
>>> screwing around with it.
>>
>> M-x modus-themes-toggle RET
>>
>> i.e. hold Alt, press x, then type “modus-themes-toggle” and hit the
>> return key.
>>
>> We can add a little toggle button to Guile Studio that does this.
>
> Kinda tangential, but could Emacs be made to just use the system (GTK)
> theme?

Yes, that’s my plan, but I don’t have enough time this month to work on
it.  My notes:

+ when =dconf read /org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme= returns
  ’prefer-dark’ enable dark mode by default.

+ use =xprop= to change the theme variant *after* the frame has been created; see
  https://gist.github.com/itoshkov/850c46746705e32e2039fb0112a75ec7
  
+ we may also need to set =GTK_THEME= to =Adwaita:dark= before actually
  launching Guile Studio.  Or rather the value at
  =/org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/theme= followed by =:dark=.  This
  can be done in shell wrapper.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[MSavoritias]

On 9/23/23 13:00, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> paul writes:
>
> Dear Paul,
>
>> On 9/23/23 09:37, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
>>> Nathan Dehnel writes:
>>>
>>>> I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable)
>>> Emacs might be somewhat different from what you know, but this is utter
>>> bollocks.
>> Thank you for your opinion but it's just that: a subjective judgement
>> based on your own episodic experience.
> I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
> triggering old pain.
>
> Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative anecdotes
> about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter them with
> positive anecdotes?
>
> It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
> starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I deeply
> regret: this has to stop.
>
> Greetings,
> Janneke
>
Depends what Emacs you mean.

The vanilla Emacs experience is traditionally horrible until you start 
tweaking it.

And it for years the maintainers of Emacs refuse to do anything to fix 
it. So I would say complaints are pretty valid

when its the same people that push Emacs as the "blessed" way to 
contribute (as in the guix manual) and then people see Emacs vanilla and 
cant use it.


The problematic is not that you say positive stuff about Emacs. I have a 
lot of positive stuff to say too :)

The problem part is the way you dismissed the persons experience as 
"bollocks". The knowledge that the Emacs community is pretty 
conservative in changing anything for decades in the default config also 
doesn't help.


MSavoritias

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[MSavoritias]

On 9/24/23 11:51, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:
> Am Sonntag, dem 24.09.2023 um 02:37 -0500 schrieb Nathan Dehnel:
>>> I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
>>> triggering old pain.
>>> Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative
>>> anecdotes about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter
>>> them with positive anecdotes?
>> It was a mistake to say that. I felt the reflexive need to justify
>> why I don't use emacs, or else people would just tell me to use it
>> anyways as a result of talking about not knowing of a decent
>> (alternative) lisp editor.
> I mean, you could try using it anyways, whether it's vanilla emacs,
> customized emacs, guile studio, or the heavily popularized spacemacs,
> doom, etc. variants.  On the Guix side, it doesn't really matter, our
> configuration works with packages based on Emacs.
>
> It's fine if you prefer another editor, but don't count on us to write
> documentation for every editor out there, especially when it almost
> always turns out to be invoking "guix edit" followed by "git commit …"
> or perhaps using that editor's built-in VC integration to do so.  I'm
> also not convinced you need to bring the big guns of lisp editing to
> the table.  From personal experience, an editor that autocompletes the
> closing bracket and has parentheses matching capabilities suffices.
> The latter is even implemented by crude tools such as gnome-text-
> editor.

How about we start with two editors then besides vanilla Emacs then?

Because we don't even have two now.

>>> It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
>>> starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I
>>> deeply regret: this has to stop.
>> I want to clarify that I'm not just repeating rumors and I actually
>> have tried to use emacs.
> There is a wide span of "tried emacs".  I personally wouldn't say I've
> "tried" vi after hitting ESC :q once and being done or even that I've
> tried using ed after vaguely figuring out how you can make it actually
> change the contents of a file.
>
> Now whether you want to qualify your experience further or not is up to
> you, and even if you do, your personal choice of a suitable editor
> remains personal.  However, I don't think that repeating the age old
> jokes of "herp derp, me no likes defaults" as has happened in other
> branches of this topic is helpful.  *The defaults in Emacs do not
> matter.*  You don't need to be happy with the editor you get out of the
> box.  You can change it into the editor you want and there's ample
> documentation on how to do so.  Coming full circle, this is why we
> reference Emacs in the manual, enough people collaborated to suggest a
> workflow that works for them or at least goes in the right direction.
> However, I think it's fair to say that most folks' setup will differ
> ever so slightly from what is presented there.
>
> Cheers
>
>
That's the thing you are missing.

The default of Emacs absolutely do matter.

Because

1. not everybody has time to learn elisp and configure Emacs so it 
doesn't break.

2. By how the defaults are you see how the community around a program is.

If the defaults are good and empower the person using the program that 
means that the community is open

to suggestions and changes at the very least. which is not what happens 
with Emacs.

This is from someone who uses Emacs.


MSavoritias

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Liliana Marie Prikler]

Am Montag, dem 25.09.2023 um 14:19 +0300 schrieb MSavoritias:
> 
> On 9/24/23 11:51, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:
> > [...]
> > It's fine if you prefer another editor, but don't count on us to
> > write documentation for every editor out there [...]
> 
> How about we start with two editors then besides vanilla Emacs then?
> 
> Because we don't even have two now.
Well, assuming you count Emacs variants (given the "vanilla" prefix
it'd only be fair if you did), we actually have at least four covered
with the manual, if not more. :)

As for other editors, I point to the sign above, with "us" being folks
who are happy to contribute to Guix from Emacs.  I know there are vi
folk out there who could probably make our section on "The Perfect
Setup" less biased, but I neither want nor am able to speak on their
behalf when it comes to actually doing so.

> > > > It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away
> > > > from starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way;
> > > > something I deeply regret: this has to stop.
> > > I want to clarify that I'm not just repeating rumors and I
> > > actually have tried to use emacs.
> > There is a wide span of "tried emacs".  I personally wouldn't say
> > I've "tried" vi after hitting ESC :q once and being done or even
> > that I've tried using ed after vaguely figuring out how you can
> > make it actually change the contents of a file.
> > 
> > Now whether you want to qualify your experience further or not is
> > up to you, and even if you do, your personal choice of a suitable
> > editor remains personal.  However, I don't think that repeating the
> > age old jokes of "herp derp, me no likes defaults" as has happened
> > in other branches of this topic is helpful.  *The defaults in Emacs
> > do not matter.*  You don't need to be happy with the editor you get
> > out of the box.  You can change it into the editor you want and
> > there's ample documentation on how to do so.  Coming full circle,
> > this is why we reference Emacs in the manual, enough people
> > collaborated to suggest a workflow that works for them or at least
> > goes in the right direction.  However, I think it's fair to say
> > that most folks' setup will differ ever so slightly from what is
> > presented there.
> > 
> > Cheers
> > 
> > 
> That's the thing you are missing.
> 
> The default of Emacs absolutely do matter.
> 
> Because
> 
> 1. not everybody has time to learn elisp and configure Emacs so it 
> doesn't break.
> 
> 2. By how the defaults are you see how the community around a program
> is.
> 
> If the defaults are good and empower the person using the program
> that means that the community is open to suggestions and changes at
> the very least. which is not what happens with Emacs.
> 
> This is from someone who uses Emacs.
I share neither the experience nor the argument.  Now granted, I do see
the appeal of preconfigured Emacsen for those who don't want to go
through the trouble of configuring it for themselves; however, there is
no "one size fits all" solution among these offerings as far as I can
see.  In fact, I'd argue the opposite, as they themselves have to offer
customization so to appeal to a broader audience.  For all the rant
about how insane the defaults of Emacs are, the various "sane defaults"
offered by others sure tend in various different directions.  It's
almost as though coding for the common case leaves many people out and
the customization mechanism is what actually empowers users.

Cheers

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 at 20:54, Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The default of Emacs absolutely do matter.

[...]

> I share neither the experience nor the argument. 

[...]

Please, we are not on the emacs-devel mailing list. :-)  Or maybe, we
need to create some guix-tagents mailing list. ;-)

Cheers,
simon

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Christine Lemmer-Webber]

Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:

> ________________________________
>
>> Hi, for some reason emacs has become the elephant in the room of the
>> discussion on contributing to guix.
>>
>> Regardless of one's opinion of emacs, I just want to add that this is
>> itself strange.  I have contributed some (package definition) patches
>> to guix, all without using emacs.
>>
>> I am not an emacs user, so emacs is not necessary for contributing to guix.
>> For what it's worth, the emacs-motif package in Guix was my addition.
>> I don't use it myself.
>
> I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable), so I just use
> kate instead, which isn't a great environment for me either. It has
> rainbow parens, but it doesn't balance them, which is a hassle. I keep
> using it though due to lack of time to browse through alternatives. I
> heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
> and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
> screwing around with it.
>
> https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/lispforeveryone/
> This is the only setup for coding in lisp that has actually looked
> attractive to me. (Coding in wisp with colored blocks that transpiles
> to s-expressions) Though I haven't had the time (and probably
> expertise) to set it up for myself.

Happy to see this talk get some attention.  It does advocate a variety
of possible approaches, one of them Wisp (and the wisp-mode colored
block stuff is pretty awesome).

If you like that approach and want to not have to do the
parenthesis-balancing as much yourself, there's an interesting overlap
between Wisp and parinfer, which automatically infers the parentheses
from whitespace but keeps them in the actual source.  I have personally
never tried using parinfer for serious tasks though.  It still requires
an editor set up for those features.

Since Spritely is also using Guile heavily, we have also spent a lot of
time talking about possible directions for helping non-emacs-users get
going with our tooling.  Personally I think the biggest path to success
is likely to be seeing Guile support (starting with parenthetical Guile)
also be very strong in mainstream editors.  A lot has changed in the
programming editor world recently: LSP looks like a very promising
direction for this.  (Anyway, there's no decisionmaking yet in terms of
what we're doing, it just has come up quite a bit.)

Has anyone tried using an LSP-like environment and seeing if they can
get something approximating the comfort that Guile and Geiser users in
emacs have, I wonder?  I have seen there are a couple of guile LSP
packages but I have not personally tried them.

 - Christine

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Nathan Dehnel]

Which packages are those? I' ve only seen scheme-lsp-server, which
isn't merged yet


On Wed, Sep 27, 2023 at 1:44 PM Christine Lemmer-Webber
<cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:
>
> Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > ________________________________
> >
> >> Hi, for some reason emacs has become the elephant in the room of the
> >> discussion on contributing to guix.
> >>
> >> Regardless of one's opinion of emacs, I just want to add that this is
> >> itself strange.  I have contributed some (package definition) patches
> >> to guix, all without using emacs.
> >>
> >> I am not an emacs user, so emacs is not necessary for contributing to guix.
> >> For what it's worth, the emacs-motif package in Guix was my addition.
> >> I don't use it myself.
> >
> > I don't use emacs either (because it's so impenetrable), so I just use
> > kate instead, which isn't a great environment for me either. It has
> > rainbow parens, but it doesn't balance them, which is a hassle. I keep
> > using it though due to lack of time to browse through alternatives. I
> > heard about guile-studio, but it doesn't appear to have a dark mode,
> > and I imagine trying to add one would require a bunch of emacs-style
> > screwing around with it.
> >
> > https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/lispforeveryone/
> > This is the only setup for coding in lisp that has actually looked
> > attractive to me. (Coding in wisp with colored blocks that transpiles
> > to s-expressions) Though I haven't had the time (and probably
> > expertise) to set it up for myself.
>
> Happy to see this talk get some attention.  It does advocate a variety
> of possible approaches, one of them Wisp (and the wisp-mode colored
> block stuff is pretty awesome).
>
> If you like that approach and want to not have to do the
> parenthesis-balancing as much yourself, there's an interesting overlap
> between Wisp and parinfer, which automatically infers the parentheses
> from whitespace but keeps them in the actual source.  I have personally
> never tried using parinfer for serious tasks though.  It still requires
> an editor set up for those features.
>
> Since Spritely is also using Guile heavily, we have also spent a lot of
> time talking about possible directions for helping non-emacs-users get
> going with our tooling.  Personally I think the biggest path to success
> is likely to be seeing Guile support (starting with parenthetical Guile)
> also be very strong in mainstream editors.  A lot has changed in the
> programming editor world recently: LSP looks like a very promising
> direction for this.  (Anyway, there's no decisionmaking yet in terms of
> what we're doing, it just has come up quite a bit.)
>
> Has anyone tried using an LSP-like environment and seeing if they can
> get something approximating the comfort that Guile and Geiser users in
> emacs have, I wonder?  I have seen there are a couple of guile LSP
> packages but I have not personally tried them.
>
>  - Christine

Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Munyoki Kilyungi]

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Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> aliandika:


[...]


>>
>> Thank you for your opinion but it's just that: a subjective judgement
>> based on your own episodic experience.
>
> I'm sorry if my tone was too harsh, I now realise this is still
> triggering old pain.
>
> Why is it still OK to for people to keep spreading negative anecdotes
> about Emacs, and problematic to refute them or counter them with
> positive anecdotes?
>
> It's been me believing exactly such lies that scared me away from
> starting with Emacs for years, lost years in a way; something I deeply
> regret: this has to stop.
>

This I agree with.  I got into Emacs about a
decade ago.  And what helped me I guess, was that
no one in my environment used Emacs nor knew too
much about it.  And the internet wasn't as fast as
it is now.  So in a sense, I got into the
ecosystem "by faith", and it stuck.  However, this
is not the case today.  I'm running a SICP reading
book club community locally, and the feedback I'm
getting from people who are trying it out, is that
it's "very difficult to learn", and most of these
sentiments are from the internet.


-- 
(Life is like a pencil that will surely run out,
    but will leave the beautiful writing of life.)
(D4F09EB110177E03C28E2FE1F5BBAE1E0392253F
    (hkp://keys.openpgp.org))

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Re: The e(macs)lephant in the room and the Guix Bang

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Andy,

Andy Tai <atai@atai.org> skribis:

> Regardless of one's opinion of emacs, I just want to add that this is
> itself strange.  I have contributed some (package definition) patches
> to guix, all without using emacs.
>
> I am not an emacs user, so emacs is not necessary for contributing to guix.
> For what it's worth, the emacs-motif package in Guix was my addition.
> I don't use it myself.

I agree.  It’s great that some of us are so passionate about Emacs (and
I’m certainly one of them), but I think we should make sure not to
spread the idea that one *has* to master Emacs to contribute to Guix.

Quite a few long-time contributors do not use Emacs; the tooling (‘guix
edit’, ‘guix refresh’, ‘guix style’) is also there to provide a good
experience whether or not one uses Emacs.

Ludo’.