For the last year I've been using emacs more and more. At the moment I use emacs 23.1 with:
- gnus
- org-mode
- slime
- tramp (+ bookmarks)

I was glad to see that slackware upgraded emacs to 23.1 and as of that version more packages come with emacs by default (eg tramp.) Emacs is particularly useful on my netbook where I don't usually startx and just run emacs and elinks.

I'm curious what you use emacs for. I'd like to squeeze as much as I can from from it. Are you happy with any other feature/package that emacs has?

Thank you

BTW, this is NOT a thread about vi(m). LOL

The lack of responses can mean two things:
a) nobody uses emacs anymore
b) There are no more emacs features that are worth mentioning.

Hi sycamorex,

I never used emacs before but because of this thread I had a look at it. Still investigating the possibilities. It looks promising though.

Kind regards,

Eric

Thanks for your reply.
I does take a bit of configuration and keybindings learning, but then it really pays off. Even on my main desktop, I use it for ftp, organising my busy work schedule, learning lisp, reading news (usenet)... and of course editing files

Ironically, it's slightly against linux typical philosophy of small tools doing one job and doing it well. Emacs does many tasks and does them well, LOL

I mainly use emacs for coding (and writing latex). I also normally use gdb and make from within emacs.

I never got into using it for mail, calendar, news or web browsing etc.

Cheers,

Evo2.

I did use emacs for latex in the past - I don't need to create documents at the moment.
I've never used emacs for debugging. When it comes to the point when I need to do it, I'll definitely try gdb from emacs. Thanks.

At the slight risk of derailing this, has anyone used emacs to read and write Open Document format files? From the googling I've done, it seems as if emacs can read them, but I can't tell if it can write them.

Try it and see, then tell us. There may be something on the emacswiki about it: http://www.emacswiki.org/

Oh, and I use it for Lisp (with slime).

When I first used UNIX, I used emacs all the time as a C development environment with macros to insert the usual code proformas and during compilation to open the source file at the right line in response to any compiler error. The only reason for dropping it in favour of vi was that few clients had emacs or were prepared to install at that time so vi was essential and it's hard to maintain fluency in two keyboard-orientated errors.

Nothing much at present, but it's on my hypothetical to-do list:
Do everything in emacs that can be done.

This is still definitely the weakest link in my emacs knowledge. Most of the tutorials (the (in?)famous video tutorial on slime) seem to be out of date, but I'm slowly getting there.

I might try it during the oncoming long weekend (UK). It'd be great on my netbook.

That's the only problem with emacs. Unlike vi, it's not installed by default on many systems.

You could even create/manage your TODO list in emacs' org-mode

-mew (like gnus, a mailer)
-calendar, appointments
-w3m (web browser, only sometimes)
-C/Java/etc, whenever I'm writing code that will take time...
-html/xhtml (html mode makes life so much easier...)
-latex editing/compiling (don't even need a shell with this mode)
-erc (IRC client)

I can't believe so few people use emacs in here. It's like the fastest/most useful editor I've ever tried. And you can do anything learning a bit of elisp.
vi is actually faster for small editing I think, but once you start making your own macros and stuffs, emacs becomes an addiction...

I use Emacs for C programming and running GDB, though its commands are lengthier to type than Vim.
Perhaps you could have created a Poll for actually knowing how many people here do actually use Emacs !

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure about a poll as I'm not really interested HOW MANY people use emacs. I was more curious about some HOW/WHY people use emacs.

Thanks for the clarification !