I think Joe Kopena wrote: > > > More seriously, I have to believe there are other people out there > besides myself who would not want to switch away from whatever system > they're using. In my case that's emacs and it just so does so many > things for me that I wouldn't want to be sort of forced into > using/learning some other environment---integrated mail (in my case > with hooks into a design rationale system), CVS, formatting and > colorization, auto-completion, sophisticated and easy framing/window > control viewing, shell and execution prompts, X and dumb-terminal > access (there's got to be other people besides me who also spend some > time on machines with no graphics capability), etc. >
Emacs is awesome, indeed. I was a confirmed Emacs addict until fairly recently. I tried IDEA and for a while, did most editing in Emacs, and only used IDEA to do big refactorings. Over time, though, I learned and came to depend on more and more IDEA features. Now I use IDEA exclusively for all my Java programming. The sole Emacs feature I occasionally miss is keyboard macros -- and nothing stops me from firing up Emacs to do something that requires them, as needed. > I understand that I wouldn't really be forced into the other > environment, I just wouldn't be able to use the neat stuff. For some > things that's fine---I can't see myself missing the graphical rule > editor. Ah, but it's not a graphical rule editor in the way you're thinking; not a flowchart-drawing thing, or any kind of drag and drop pallette-based thing. It's an editor like Eclipse or IDEA's Java editor -- which is, if you've never tried it, like Emacs on steroids. Syntax coloring which is dynamically and continuously updated. Little red and yellow wiggly underlines that highlight errors and warnings in your code, with tool tips that explain them, as you create them. A little "light" that turns green, yellow, or red, depending on the state of the file you're editing. Context-sensitive completion that blows JDE out of the water. Intention actions -- i.e., a little context-sensitive menu that you can pop up when there's (for example) a type error, and asks if you want to add a cast, or change the type of a variable -- and then does it automatically. Automatic, smart "ctags" that don't get outdated as you edit the files. Once you get used to working with an editor like this, it's hard to go back. But it would be neat if some other tools didn't require using > the IDE. For example, if a syntax checker were written as a fast > command line program instead of being written into an IDE, then I > wouldn't have to load up the jvm/jess/app to look for errors and > anybody could use it through their favorite IDE by binding it to some > keys or a menu item. You could probably have a plugin wrap it and > present the results nicely in Eclipse just as I could have a little > bit of elisp wrap it up and show me the results nicely in emacs. For some of the tools, I think this is true. The debugger *could* be a command-line debugger with a graphical shell. The cross-referencer *could* have a text-based menu system. --------------------------------------------------------- Ernest Friedman-Hill Distributed Systems Research Phone: (925) 294-2154 Sandia National Labs FAX: (925) 294-2234 PO Box 969, MS 9012 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Livermore, CA 94550 http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov -------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users [EMAIL PROTECTED]' in the BODY of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
