$text mode in aquamacs$

Emacs 18 (released in 1987) introduced a server mode designed to run continuously in the background. However, it is highly customizable and includes a large number of features, as it is essentially an execution environment for a Lisp program designed for text-editing. This makes Emacs take longer to start up (even compared to vim) and require more memory. This creates a path in the decision tree which unambiguously identifies any command.Įmacs executes many actions on startup, many of which may execute arbitrary user code. Vi retains each permutation of typed keys. This still forms a decision tree of commands, but not one of individual keystrokes. Traditionally, Emacs commands are key combinations for which modifier keys are held down while other keys are pressed a command gets executed once completely typed. Which is why emacs is at version 23 where vim (on my machine) is only at 7.2 and nano at 2.0.The most important historical differences between vi and Emacs are presented in the following table: But it took so many releases that they ended up just dropping the '0.' designation and calling it 'x' instead. IIRC they were numbering the releases 0.x and working up to 1.0 as normal. On a side note, the emacs versioning system is amusing in itself. Obviously still gotta take care with that vital data when doing so, my good experiences notwithstanding! On the basis of my experience I will consider testing CVS versions of emacs in future if they have useful features that I need. If the final release is at least as good as the random CVS checkout I have then it ought to be pretty good! To be fair it sounds like lots of features have been added since my checkout. I can probably count the crashes I've had from it on my fingers - in unary, not binary, for the benefit of any pedants out there. Whenever I start it up it displays a warning about how it might be horribly unstable, eat my data, etc.īut I have found it to be remarkably stable - much more so than many / most final releases of software. I've been sticking to it because of the antialiasing, basically. This is a version I checked out from emacs CVS on that date, compiled with GTK support and antialiasing (at least one, possibly both of which were experimental at the time) and have been using this version ever since. *I'm not implying that emacs is mediocre just stating general principles. Otherwise what's the point in running separate apps, why don't we just build all the functionality you'll ever need straight into the OS, it'd sure be faster that way. 'Perfection is achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away' - Antoine de Saint-ExuperyĪn application should do one thing and do it well, not do a gazillion things in a mediocre way*.

It makes you wonder why other text editors don't do things. When you understand this, jokes about 'ha ha your text-editor-operating-system does X' aren't funny. Yet people-even supposedly knowledgeable people-demand stupidly broken tools that lack sophisticated tools for doing a sophisticated thing. Text editing, text processing, and generally manipulating anything involving language-especially natural language-is the most complicated thing that's ever done on a computer. 'Haw haw a text editor that duz stuff, we here around these parts just use NOTEPAD.EXE' Still looks like crap, but it seems to be working, for the most part. May actually be usable, I'll give it credit.Įmacs works better than it did last time I tried it. and C-h actually works this time! Though only once. 'emacs foo' opens as expected, lets me type normally and clicking the save button saves.

It's using 1970s technology or something so it needs a filename before it can edit anything. Yeah, I get it, I'll stop playing dumb now. I don't want to find a file, I want a new file. 'Visit new file'? Are you serious? Okay, fine, they're hippies, whatever. okay, I guess that wasn't it, I'll try through the menu instead.įile. Oh well, there's a standard 'new file' button in the corner, I'll click that.Īlright, now the bottom of the window says 'Find file: ~/'. Hm, I expected to get a useless scratchpad thing, but it looks like instead I'm in some sort of crudely-made slapped together temporary menu that they'll replace with something more sensible in the final version. What fun! Here goes 'Attempt #4 at actually using emacs' okay, I typed 'useless scratchpad thing' here, then went to see if anything had changed since last I tried it. At least in VIM, random typing can accidentally put you in a useful mode.Įmacs starts in some sort of.

Text mode in aquamacs