How many times does it have to be said? You have to read some documentation before you use emacs -- either read the first few bits of the manual, or use the builtin tutorial. Both of these would, for example, have explained what C-f means in the first few paragraphs. Clearly, emacs doesn't suit your requirements, but there's no need to go off on an extended rant just because someone's offering you a program (for free!) which doesn't do exactly what you want it to do.

You're apparently annoyed because linux doesn't provide a console-based editor/IDE hybrid. Not many operating systems do these days - if I remember right, the only example you came up with ran in DOS.

Well, the reason you should get used to it is that emacs is a uniquely powerful bit of software (honestly it is; we're not all masochists ). The reasons you shouldn't have to get used to it have already been explained at length by your good self. Perhaps we should leave it there.

Alex

dont really want to propogate any arguments but

"ITS NOT M-v its ALT-V DAMMIT!" not on my blade 100 it isnt ALT-V doesnt do anything.

"Is it familiar?" it is if you grew up with it. not everybody grew up with dos and windows you know.

Like I said before... if Emacs was such a hot design... it would have been emulated...

it isnt...

plain and simple.

In fact just the opposite has occurred, the movement is AWAY from emacs presentation layer design philosophy, and towards more recognizable, user friendly UI's....

Before I read any books on it... someone has to first tell me if Emacs is an Editor or an IDE... If its an editor, then maybe I can use it.... if its an IDE, there are much better options. Which is it?

by oopicmaster
Like I said before... if Emacs was such a hot design... it would have been emulated...

im not gonna get into this stupid argument but i just want to draw your attention to the fact that C-a, C-e, C-n, C-p the keys to move to the start and end of lines and up/down lines are used in bash and anything that links to the readline library like bc and pretty much everything else. im sure other emacs key combinations are all over the place. but i dont use them so i dont know.

Riiiiiiiigh.......T

"ITS NOT M-v its ALT-V DAMMIT!"

The M stands for Meta. Not every keyboard has alt-keys. I somewhat suspect the people who developed, or at least started to develop emacs used keyboards without alt-keys.

I could just as well say "if Emacs was such a terrible design, no-one would use it", and it would be the same level of argument. Anyway, it has been emulated (Jove, for example).

In this sense (UI), emacs is behind the times, but notice that there is more and more of a trend for applications to be scriptable these days. This is one example of a central aspect of emacs' design being copied. In fact, there have been all sorts of attempts to copy various aspects of emacs, but most of them have failed because it's not easy to write software of that quality.

It's neither really. It's a scriptable editor which can be Integrated into your Development Environment, but it's not really an IDE in the usual sense. Btw, you can find this information out quite easily without reading books on emacs - I should know because I've never read any...

Alex

I think you see the world as too simple. what is emulated (I'd use the word copied) is not a good measure of a products value.

I can list two reasons why one would not choose to copy emacs:

1) Its free - why copy something that is already done, available and modifyable by everyone
2) It would require a LOT of development effort, its not a simple editor (as you have pointed out)

Whats more, you can say it has been copied/emulated, have you seen how many Emacs varients exist?

If you want menus, buttons and all that, just use XEmacs... And I don't know what's wrong with your scroll bar, mine works just as expected.

Emacs is a tool, it is an IDE, it is a mail client, it is a news reader, it is a web browser, it is an XML editor, it is a ......., there are too many to list, But most important to me is, it's a very powerful editor.

I will be leaving this topic since it is dead, but again, I think you should educate yourself regarding any topic before you decide to publically rant about it.

I am not interested in a war over editors, my comments have been mainly for your benefit since I think it is you who will missout in the end. I'm happy with my editor, and therefore have no need to get emotional etc over this topic.

I wish you luck in your editor search, let's just hope, for you, that it ends some day

Jack of all trades master of none.

Like I said.... try designing an APP for your client (if you are a coder) that mimics Emacs design.... see how long you keep your job.

It may be a powerful editor, or whatever it is, but its UI SUCKS.... PERIOD, get used to it.... Oh... you already have.... Ha, ha,ha, ha,......

My list of things I admire but have not caught on to...
Vi
Emacs
Slackware
etc...

I did not want to reply to this thread, but I think emacs is a pretty powerful editor. I am not a console based person(I think vi sucks), and I generally work in GUI all the time.

I never liked edit or notepad in windows, and did not like any of the editors I saw in Linux, till I was introduced to emacs. I spent like 30 mins in the tutorial, and wham, I was using it.

Unlike some others in this post, I need the editor to indent the code for me in all languages, and I hate to hit tab whenever I press enter. And, I must admit that I am pretty satusfied with emacs. I've used a lot of IDE's, but still stick with emacs for my programming tasks, as it is very easy for me to use it.

And, I had no problems with buffers and files. Files are stored in your drive, while buffers are temporary memory areas using which you operate on your files.

And I think that emacs is the most customizable of all teh editors that I have used.

You are right... I think I will contact ALL other editor makers and ask them to please refer to files in memory as buffers, instead of unsaved/modified files....

Oh yeah... I will also recommend that they forget the great popup dialogs, help, config dialogs, etc, and instead add a bunch of useless crap/games to the editor as well.

Man! (smacking forehead) NOW I know why Ive been so confused all of these years! Ive been calling an unsaved file, and unsaved file! Silly me.

I think we'd already established that emacs doesn't have a modern UI. If this is really such an insurmountable problem for you, don't use it. Just bear in mind that it's a very powerful editor, and that as far as actually getting stuff done is concerned, it's very efficient.

Alex

Ive been unable to determine exactly what emacs is first... an editor or an IDE...

As an IDE I would MUCH rather use KDevelop, Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc.

As an editor, Id rather use setedit.

All Ive said, is that from a user friendly perspective, it stinks. The online help is minimal at best, and it uses notation that is outside accepted norms. One should NOT have to read a book before using a tool. If the presentation layer of the tool is well designed, using it will be familiar.

For example... in MOST apps out there, accessing the Menubar is done by pressing the ALT key... in EMacs is F10, or ESC ` which brings up the menu on the bottom of the screen.... What other software works that way? If you press F10 when the "bottom style" menu is up it gives you an error (something about a minibuffer)! Then... the WHOLE menu system works different if you run it in X! Very poor UI design.

Ive used eclipse, KDevelop, and Anjuta IDE's each of which I was up and debugging code in minutes....

emacs may be powerful but it needs a SERIOUS style makeover.

This question has already been answered, and it's pretty disengenuous. It can edit text; it's integrated with the gcc toolchain to a fair degree, so it's basically a text editor with IDE features thrown in (as opposed to say, Ajunta, which is an IDE with a text editor thrown in).

You don't have to read a book to use emacs. It has a very functional online tutorial.

I thought you wanted something console-based, and this is why emacs came up in the first place, because you specifically rejected KDevelop and Ajunta for this reason.

Why? lots of people like it as it is.

Alex