I switched from Emacs to XEmacs today as my primary editor for one main reason, XEmacs made it easy for me to change my font. This is not a trivial issue when you are running at a high resolution and do not feel like sitting with your nose in the screen, although apparently this feature is fluf acording to some Emacs buffs. It seems that there is some way of setting the font / font size in Emacs as well but I still have no idea how this is done.

XEmacs made this easy by adding a menu option (Option->Font, Option->Font Size). It also supports a nice feature (Option->Edit Faces), which give you a configuration buffer for setting up all of the colors and font variations that are used in the editor. Much easier and quicker than hacking the config file over and over until you get your desired look.

I’ve been using Emacs for a couple of years now. At first as an experiment to see why it had such a cult like following and later because I felt like I couldn’t obtain such amazing efficiency in any other environment. Since those ealry days (with sticky notes posted all over the edges of my monitor as reminders of key bindings) Emacs has, in addition to code and configuration files, become my email composer, news reader (gnus), and general text/doc editor (maybe a small subset of uses compared to the Emacs buffs).

I am by no means a purist. I bust out SlickEdit using its emacs edit mode when it comes to editing coding projects. Its the only IDE sutable for an emacs user who wants an environment with some additional powerful features but has the whole Emacs feel intact. The key bindings even work in dialog popups allowing my hands to stay on the keyboard. You also can’t beat instantly switching to your co-workers favorite editing mode (vi, visual studio, etc.) when they come over to help you out. My only gripe… Why is emacs-select-char not bound to the C-Space by default? Show me an Emacs user who doesn’t use that key combo.

Whats Missing?

Embedded emacs into every OS window / dialog and web browser textbox. Beyond that, a desktop environment that can be controled and manipulated via the keyboard using emacs like key strokes. Well the desktop environment is not even missing with the wonderful Fluxbox at our disposal. It is completely controllable from the keyboard. Plant you fingers and fire away applications, window manulipations (move, resize), workspace changes, etc. Very nice but what I really want is this level of control within Gnome. Its keybinding configuration comes close but no enchilada yet and how is an Emacs user supose to use gnome-terminal when hitting M-f pulls down a menu instead of moving the cursor forward a word?

It would be really cool to have the emacs editor embeded into firefox as optional usage in all text boxes (setting the gtk-key-theme to Emacs just doesn’t cut it. Also how cool would it be to control the browser (forward, back, moving through tabs) using emacs like key bindings? This too existed as a project that did not keep up to date with new versions of Firefox. But I’ve just now discovered Conkeror exists and Bill Clementson seems quite fond so its time for me to give it a try.

I can’t say I agree with everything here, but check out effective-emacs for some “power user” emacs tips.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 12:34 am and is filed under Linux, Scott. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.