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Emacs anyone?

 
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Anybody use Emacs? I just installed the win32 version and am a little overwhelmed by the keycode combinations. Does anybody have a good resource to learn emacs.
 
Trailboss
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I'd like to know this too. I plan on learning emacs this week or next.
 
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Have you tried Ctrl-h t?
 
Tim Uckun
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I looked at the help screens. What I am wondering about is wheather or not there is some sense to them. Like in VI most of the commands kind of stand for something (kind of being the operative phrase). Maybe somebody has a quick list or a cheat card. I tried to use VI and I can get around in it OK. It's cool the way it's so modal you don't see that anymore. If you use VIM you get syntax highlighting and even a PERL mode where you can execute PERL command on your text. IT's amazing what editors can do these days.
 
Tim Uckun
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I found out that there are a couple of good books on emacs. One is by oreilly and is probably excellant (they tend to publish good books). The other is by Richard Stallman (the author of emacs) and is published by the free software foundation. I decided to buy the latter book because a portion of the profits go to the FSF and I have a great deal of admiration for the GNU folks. They also sell all kinds of reference cards and software like all the win32 ports of GNU stuff on one CD. I would like to encourage everybody to visit their web site and buy something or make a contribution to them. They have given us so much surely they deserve our support.
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I'm not ripping on EMACS, but can I ask why one would want to learn it if they already know VI?
Once mastered (around 6 months of use) VI has got to be one of the fastest and most proficient text editors that ever existed. It comes standard with most, if not all UNIX/Linux platforms (always has, probably always will) and the command line capability is awsome (not available in the majority of other editors I've seen).
I guess I'm asking about EMACS because I don't know much about it. Is it really cool? Does it have more features that VI (or close to it)? Should I consider switching? Am I living in the dark ages?
 
Tim Uckun
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This is one of the longest running flame wars in history. I don't know if one is superior to the next. I know VI a little bit and I like it but I though I should give emacs a try because I always people say its the best text editor ever so I am going to learn it. BTW VI has an emacs mode and emacs has a vi mode. This ought to tell you how powerfull each one is.
 
Matt Midcap
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Huh, I didn't know about that (modes).
I guess I'll wait for Paul to buy a few books on EMACS and "borrow" one when he's not looking. It definately sounds like checking out.
 
paul wheaton
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I really need to get better locks on my book cabinet.
I've used vi before and I hated it. If you get interrupted and you're in the middle of some mode and start typing .... AAAACK!
I think it agreed upon everywhere that if you can get used to vi, it gives programmers the most productivity. I think that in the years to come, emacs will be champ. I hope to learn emacs soon.

 
Tim Uckun
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I think that the modality is one of the reasons why it's so productive. It allows you to reduce the number of keystrokes required to execute any command. Also it's a more efficient way to enter commands because you don't need to be holding down the ctrl or the alt key.
My book just came in from Amazon.com. I ordered it from Amazon because FSF did not take credit cards via the web (yea I know I'm lazy). This book is thick enough to stun an ox. I am looking forward to reading it. The cheat cards are a lot cheaper and may be sufficient for most people though.
P.S. I found out ALL of the profits from the book go to support FSF so I don't feel at all bad about spending the money on the book.
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Greenhorn
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How do i get syntax coloring for java in Emacs. Also, i remember some xtensions for Emans, which makes it easier for writing, compiling & running the java code fomr emacs easy. Does anyone have any pointer. write me to pavkb@hotmail.com
Thanks
Pavan
 
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What are emacs and VI? I gathered a little from the debate, however, I'm not familiar with either.
 
Wanderer
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They're text editors which come to us from the land of Unix, though now there are various ports available for Windows. Like many things in Unix, they are (a) not intuitively easy to use when you first try them, and (b) immensely powerful and useful once you get the hand of them. I hear that's even more true of emacs than it is of vi, but I've been happy enough with vi that I haven't really delved into emacs. So many things to master, so little time...
 
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This thread looks a bit dead, but as an Emacs user, I thought I'd share my .emacs file, which I tricked out a bit. You can download it from www.mg2.org/nick/emacs.txt
Happy Hacking.

-Nick
 
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