Comments on Deciphering Glyph: The Emacs Test

Re the collaboration, have you heard about emacscl...

2009-03-09T17:11:07.238-07:00

Re the collaboration, have you heard about emacsclient? Type M-x server-start in your Emacs instance, then connect to it from another tty with emacsclient -tty, and it will connect to your emacs as another "instance".

It's like using Screen twice, except that with emacsclient it is a separate "instance" of each buffer, so that two people can type on the same buffer simultaneously at different cursor positions!

I've tried this with a friend, he connected over the internet with SSH, then typed emacsclient -tty, and we both edited the same buffer at the same time!

The issues are (1) it's not really meant for collaboration so it doesn't support things like (2) showing where the other user's cursor is and (3) what the other user has changed (like Gobby does), and (4) you can't type anything when another client is interacting with the minibuffer. But it's pretty neat and useful, and someone who is sufficiently skilled with Emacs might be able to add some of those Gobby-ish features to it.

Enjoy!

Check this out: http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python...

2009-01-17T23:08:17.868-08:00

Check this out: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors

There are quite a few editors there. Just do a search for "great" and figure out which "great" suits you.

I'm pretty happy with TextMate.

Well, VIM does have a kill ring of sorts. Instead ...

2008-12-31T06:04:19.324-08:00

Well, VIM does have a kill ring of sorts. Instead of just yanking with yy you can do "xyy where x is any letter and yank to a register x. That way you get to keep up to 28 previous yanks if you care about them all.

Personally, if I think what I yanked will be needed later elsewhere as well I yank it to a register and keep it.

If what I yank is not needed except immediately to put it back once then I yank it to unnamed register.

Yes and Amen!By the way, I think you meant "easy t...

2008-12-29T15:31:12.715-08:00

Yes and Amen!

By the way, I think you meant "easy to be ambivalent", not "difficult to be ambivalent."

Is there a reason that associating modules with te...

2008-12-29T04:27:42.329-08:00

Is there a reason that associating modules with test modules is a feature of twisted-dev.el instead of trial?

"When I hit C-x C-b I can't start typing to filter...

2008-12-26T21:23:08.471-08:00

"When I hit C-x C-b I can't start typing to filter the list. "

Try Anything. It does exactly that and much more:

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Anything

@metajack regarding the filtering of file names - ...

2008-12-26T15:56:00.271-08:00

@metajack regarding the filtering of file names - maybe ido-mode is not enabled? Try issuing a M-x ido-mode and then C-x C-b again.

A few questions:* When I hit C-x C-b I can't start...

2008-12-26T15:29:10.984-08:00

A few questions:

* When I hit C-x C-b I can't start typing to filter the list. Even if I switch to that buffer and start typing it doesn't do this. What am I missing?

* What are you using for the trailing whitespace stuff?

* Which vc mode are you using? Isn't hte standard vc-mode stuff terrible for things like Bazaar and Git?

* which-function-mode doesn't appear to do anything for me. I have it turned on but it doesn't show anything new in the status line. Any ideas?

Eclipse with PyDev. You can even teach PyDev to us...

2008-12-25T07:58:56.663-08:00

Eclipse with PyDev.

You can even teach PyDev to use -*- testcase: ... -*- to run proper unit tests.

I've tried Peppy [(ap)Proximated (x)Emacs Powered ...

2008-12-24T18:37:57.610-08:00

I've tried Peppy [(ap)Proximated (x)Emacs Powered by Python] a few times, though not very recently. I think I'm in the same place -- I don't want to be all retro, but I want an editing environment that fits programmers, not something that started with the assumptions that everyone is a newbie (modern GUI conventions) and then added on from there. (vi and Emacs are really more alike than different in this regard)

Anyway, at least Peppy actually claims to be trying to be Emacs, which I appreciate.

Great post! I remember some time ago I had like y...

2008-12-24T18:21:34.041-08:00

Great post! I remember some time ago I had like you the desire to switch to an editor/ide that feels more modern and that others can more easily wrap their heads around - but now have settled with accepting that I'll propably not leave emacs anytime soon. If ever. Discovering org-mode was the most notable influence, and propably the fact that I don't do any java development anymore where it certainly makes sense to use a better integrated IDE, but mostly web development with ruby plus a heterogenous bunch of all kinds of filetypes.

Thanks - your list of features improved my confidence in continuing to use emacs, even if that was not the intention ;). Allow me to share some tips below for the case you need to stick with emacs a bit longer, and some questions.

> Can you do what I mean when I press the "go" button?

Maybe offtopic because it doesn't fit to your workflow, but worth mentioning - the recompile function. I found it extremely useful when working on single tests, where I would need to go and edit several different implementation files (which in my case have no annotations that point to specific tests) to fix a particular issue. I added a little function save-and-recompile and bound it to C-x C-y - close enough to the standard save C-x C-s, but with an extra "run that last test again". A bit like autotest for ruby but with full control.

> Can I reach the thing I need to work on fast?

I'm used to most of the standard emacs keybindings but for things as fundamental as buffer / frame switching and killing, having to combine two keystrokes always annoyed me, I therefore highly recommend binding them to shorter ones as long as you stick with emacs. E.g. I have ido-switch-buffer bound to C-tab.

> Can I use it remotely over the internet? Collaboratively?

Would you elaborate a bit how you pair program over the internet? Do you simply have a console emacs open within a screen session, or something different? I'd love to be able to collaborate from within emacs running in X. make-frame-on-display is somehow nice but I never used it in practice.

> Can I tell what I'm working on?

Wow - thanks for reminding me of which-func-mode. This is just what I needed right now after getting lost in some larger ruby files with several classes defined.

Great post!I've been using emacs for a lot of year...

2008-12-24T14:55:30.925-08:00

Great post!

I've been using emacs for a lot of years, and I still use it for most work. But for Java work I use Eclipse with its emacs key bindings. Eclipse provides almost everything I like about emacs, but with some additional great features like code completion, on-the-fly compilation, and ctrl-shift-F reformatting of an entire source file to conform to highly customizable formatting rules. Eclipse's Python and PHP modes seem good too (oddly, C/C++ modes not so much).

Mario - vim has a kill ring? That's news to me an...

2008-12-24T12:23:28.917-08:00

Mario - vim has a kill ring? That's news to me and I've been using it for 16 years. Anyway, vim certainly contains all the things glyph doesn't like about emacs as well. (I'm not sure whether it's worse or better; on the scale of "weird things your editor can confuse newbies with", modal vs. control commands nested two-deep is a coin toss for me.)

I feel like I should write the vim version of this, but I probably won't because I just don't think about my editor as much as glyph does. :-)

(Just found this implementation of a kill ring in vim: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1234. Gonna try that out - looks like it does the right things for a vim user.)

Have you ever looked at Epsilon from Luguru Softwa...

2008-12-24T11:33:07.552-08:00

Have you ever looked at Epsilon from Luguru Software? www.lugaru.com

@Mark StockWith ido-mode (which is packaged --but ...

2008-12-24T10:27:49.244-08:00

@Mark Stock

With ido-mode (which is packaged --but not enabled by default -- with newer emacs) you don't even have to type the full name. It offers flexible completion (so pga.h will match "pg_aggregate.h") and instant auto-completion (with menus of choices) as well as buffer history searching (so you don't have to be adjacent to the file to open it).

Plus, how often do you open new buffers? Generally most emacs users simply never close them.

Well, VIM does all those things as well, and more ...

2008-12-24T09:38:03.830-08:00

Well, VIM does all those things as well, and more of course.

I am reading about the keystrokes that you use to ...

2008-12-24T08:47:35.844-08:00

I am reading about the keystrokes that you use to open a file "bar-baz-boz-qux.c" in the same directory:

"control-x control-f b <tab> <enter>"

To do what you are describing, on a Mac, I press:

"Command-o b <enter>"

On windows, I think I would press:

"control-o b <enter>"

> Do I need to hit more buttons than that in your editor?

Yes, Emacs needs 5 vs. Mac and Windows only 3.

> Do I need to reach for the mouse?

No.

> Do I need to navigate the inefficient-even-from-the-keyboard GTK file dialog?

Maybe. Maybe the GTK file dialog sucks. I don't know. I do know that I like reading "One that uses modern UI conventions instead of arcana from the 70s so that my friends who are not emacs-heads can quickly wrap their heads around what's going on on my screen, and perhaps dare to touch my keyboard." because Emacs makes me go totally numb.

What am I missing here?

Thanks for the article, I really enjoyed it. I'm ...

2008-12-24T08:34:02.802-08:00

Thanks for the article, I really enjoyed it. I'm a former EMACS junkie and didn't switch until I found IntellJ IDEA (I work mostly in Java). Things I like are fast file switching (filename completion across the entire src tree). The remote editing thing isn't there, but many of the other features you listed are. The UI tries to be unobtrusive as possible, I rarely have to use the mouse, etc.

My main point is this: how many hours have you spent customizing/tweaking/learning EMACS? Many, I'd wager. I bet to a certain degree, EMACS has affected the way you work- sure you customized it, but the way it does things has hugely impacted the way you work.

Its highly unlikely that you'll just be able to waltz into any available editor and have it work just the way you want. I bet that any modern editor will have some capacity to do everything you want, but it will require tweaking, learning, adjusting. My advice is to look at a few, and dig in and learn the one you like the most, then check out another one, giving each the time to show you how awesome (or not) they are.

Have you tried the Anything package? Another compe...

2008-12-24T07:16:12.931-08:00

Have you tried the Anything package? Another compelling reason to use Emacs. I do not think any other editor has something like this:

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Anything

Wow, now that is some pretty cool stuff!jesswww.an...

2008-12-24T06:35:58.269-08:00

Wow, now that is some pretty cool stuff!

jess
www.anonymity.cz.tc

Can you give some pointers or module name on where...

2008-12-24T06:06:32.934-08:00

Can you give some pointers or module name on where to learn more about the productive tricks in emacs? Especially concerning code browsing, this is a need easily fulfilled with netbeans, and a bit more hidden in emacs.

Even though limited, I like netbeans UML module (if there is one thing a mouse is good at, it is diagrams).

Nice summary of emacs' features! I guess the harde...

2008-12-24T02:43:58.443-08:00

Nice summary of emacs' features! I guess the hardest part to reproduce will be the emacs keybindings. But if you kick the habit, many current IDEs already offer what you need, and much, much more. I made the transition from emacs to Netbeans when I was coding a lot of java. I never regretted it. Now that I do lots of python I was using emacs again, until Netbeans offered python support in its current version. Again, switching away from emacs was less painful than it seems. Did you try netbeans already?