On Monday, March 30, 2015 at 7:23:00 AM UTC-4, Tassilo Horn wrote: > > Fluid Dynamics <a209...@trbvm.com <javascript:>> writes: > > > * Further to the resource-usage issue, i can more easily use Emacs > > remotely over low-bandwidth links than i could use an IDE. > > > > Typical home and mobile connection speeds are multiple MBPS these days. > > Still, running Eclipse or some other IDE via X forwarding isn't too much > fun even with X2Go. >
Most people these days also have all their devices, even the handheld ones, powerful enough to run a decent IDE locally, which can work with local files or connect to a remote git repository. This obviates the need to SSH or telnet into a remote host and run both the editor AND the repository there, or to use X forwarding. > Unfortunately, one MUST do all of that and CANNOT use it as a black > > box, because it is the software analogue of a computer with no > > keyboard or monitor or anything else resembling a user interface, so > > one must toggle everything in and know the hardware internals > > backwards and forwards to get anything done. :) > > That's nonsense. As soon as you have made yourself acquainted with the > basic Emacs terminology and concepts, getting started with Clojure > development is a piece of cake. Of course, the devil is in the details. Including the implementation details that leak out all over the place, starting with the ubiquitous use of the term "buffer" in user-facing documentation. > Emacs follows the unicode standard and represents characters as > UTF8-encoded codepoints. > All very useful, right up until the time comes to display such strings to ttya0 :) > Rather, the last time I tried using emacs, I seem to recall always > > ending up with this sequence of events: > > > > a) I am trying to do some task X, for which the obvious key combination > bleeps > > or does something weird but definitely doesn't do X for some reason. > > b) Soon, I have a split pane with my document on the left and the help > files on > > the right, with the latter open to a page on task X and the input focus > in it. > > c) A little bit later, I have a split pane with my document on the left, > the > > input focus in my document, and the help pane on the right open to a > page on > > how to switch focus between panes, and I don't remember the long and > > complicated sequence of keystrokes needed to perform task X any more > because it > > was deleted from my brain's short term memory to remember the long and > > complicated sequence of keystrokes that is how one says "alt+tab" in the > > obscure and archaic dialect known as emacsese. > > d) Repeat b) and c) a few times, while experiencing an acute event of > abnormal > > pre-menopausal hair loss. > > e) Give up and fire up Notepad, Eclipse, or whatever seems best suited > to > > current task. ;) > > I think with "help pane" you mean a window showing the Emacs info > manual. Oh, if only. If it had been an actual window, I'd have been able to use OS-native window switching to switch between it and the document I was working on, and leave the help window open to something other than the how to switch panes topic! :) You can have as many of them open as you like, say, one for > "task X", and one for "switching focus between windows". > And then have what, two 27x24 and a 26x24 keyhole to squint through at everything? :) Less a couple of lines at the bottom for status notifications and the little command input area, of course. > * The Emacs ecosystem is growing rapidly; http://melpa.org/ > > currently lists ~2400 packages ("extensions" or "addons") > > available for easy installation via Emacs' package.el UI. > > > > > > I wonder how anyone can find anything in that mess. > > Searching might be a start. > If searching in emacs was as intuitive as control-F and type in a substring to look for, it likely would be. :) > The Java and Clojure IDEs are probably each sandwiched amongst > > hundreds of consecutive entries > > Yes, of course. Hey, how to people use apt-get/packman/yum/whatever? > The packages needed for "task X" are sandwiched between tens of > thousands of unrelated packages. > For something like Ubuntu, there's probably a nicely designed searchable website not entirely unlike the Firefox addons site Moz runs. Given the vintage of the emacs "user experience" (I use this term loosely), its version probably is a textual alphabetical list with a blinking prompt at the bottom, with no perceived affordances of any way to search or jump nonlinearly within the list, and unless you're lucky perhaps not even an obvious way to page down and page up. (The keys on every keyboard bearing those precise labels, no doubt, beep and do nothing else, or else do things entirely unrelated to paging down and up, this being emacs we're discussing after all.) > all the rest of which are for languages nobody has ever heard of > > outside of one obscure city near Bernhöfen, or that nobody has used > > since 1987, or that nobody has used period because the whole thing was > > invented as an obscure joke (e.g. Befunge). > > I don't see how support for niche languages is a bad thing. > If there was any realistic hope of a search interface any reasonably computer-savvy person could just sit down and use, it wouldn't be. Without such a hope, clutter becomes a catastrophe. Oh, no doubt someone in emacsland has managed to notice Tim Berners-Lee's newfangled invention by now, perhaps a few weeks or a month ago, and threw up a web site with downloadable items, and no doubt using these downloads, instead of whatever inbuilt package management, entails performing a 27-step manual installation procedure whose instructions, though thorough, are written assuming nobody in the audience isn't at least working on getting their master's degree in emacsology, if not already a postdoc or something. :) > Yes, there can be a steeper initial learning curve with Emacs than > > with IDEs, > > > > This easily qualifies as a very strong candidate to be crowned > > understatement of the century, and we're not even 1/6 of the way > > through this one yet. Steeper? It's like comparing a gentle hill to > > the part of a roller coaster track that's more than halfway up the > > side of a loop-the-loop. The emacs learning curve is so steep it has > > overhangs! > > Every newbie should run through the tutorial once (C-h t) in which all > important concepts are discussed. After that, you are initiated and > should be able to look up documentation yourself. > If said newbie has an eidetic memory, then you are likely correct. Otherwise, after reading the tutorial they will spend the next several hours realizing that they forgot this, and forgot that, and forgot that other thing, and forgot an additional 119 miscellaneous things, all of which were too long (meta-shift-x-what?), arbitrary, and non-mnemonic-in-the-least for any mere human to retain more than one or two of them without hours, days, or perhaps even weeks of intensive drilling. I don't suppose there's an emacs boot camp out there somewhere where this takes place? Otherwise, the number of people that have overcome all of the issues I witnessed to become some kind of proficient with emacs is difficult to explain, as eidetic memories simply aren't particularly prevalent in the population at large. > Have they gotten around to adding a feature that makes it simple and > > intuitive to switch between the help pane and a document pane without > > having to navigate the help pane away from the thing you can't > > memorize to some other, pane-switching thing you also can't memorize? > > `C-x o' is the standard key for cycling thru windows ("panes"). "Standard"? AFAIK it is used by the one single application, while to a fairly good approximation ALL THE REST of the world's software to which it's even applicable use control-tab (or command-tab, on Macintoshes). I'm quite interested to see whichever dictionary contains the definition of "standard" you are using. :) And to browse as many info manuals simultaneously so that you don't have > to navigate away from one topic to read another, you can have as many > open info buffers as you wish. I must confess to some amusement at the image that comes to mind of what it must look like when the terminal window is divided into more than a very small handful of panes. To me at this point, even 80x22 would be like peering through a mail slot at my code whilst wearing a pirate eyepatch. The command that you invoke to open the > documentation also tells you how, i.e., the solution is documented in > `C-h k C-h i' ("Please Emacs, describe the command which gets executed > by the key `C-h i'."). > Pardon me, but you may have mistaken me for somebody who has already learned Swahili. :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. 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