   What's so great about emacs? (aka cool tricks with emacs)
  I'm experimenting with many different things now and recently I ran into emacs (xemacs, to be exact). There's a whole subculture dedicated to it, and many people say it's the best editor on the face of the earth due to the fact that it's extremely customizable. Well, I learned the basics, looked into a few tutorials but I still fail to see the genious. Can someone please enlighten me?Note, I am not being sarcastic, I really want to learn what emacs has to offer and perhaps switch if it suits my needs better then my current editors.[edited by - CoffeeMug on August 3, 2003 12:26:56 AM]
  I personally use it because I know it better than VIM.Some good things about it:* Split window editing.* Regex in search and replace* Ability to create directories on the fly.* Meta-X, and ^X functionality.* The ^G cancel on the Meta-X and ^X functionality* Emacs modes makes it easier to see bugs in my code* Completely customised using a dialect of lisp. There is even a text based browser using thisHowever, if all I need is a quick edit, I just use VIM, rather than load up Eventually Mallocs All Conventional Storage. ;  I''m still trying to figure out how people use VI.Honestly, I think people who use it are probably in on some huge "inside joke". ;  Well, some of the features of VIM (not to turn this into a holy war) is it is fast and portable, and extenable via the ruby language.I honestly do not know VIM well enough to explain all its features, but one of the big ones is it does not take as many resources to run as EMACS. ;quote:Original post by Mithrandir  I''m still trying to figure out how people use VI.Honestly, I think people who use it are probably in on some huge "inside joke".   That or they think its cool to do things the hardest and most logic lacking way posible. It makes them special. Midnight Commander baby. It has crazy things like what keys to press like right there in front of you! Mad Genius! I know there must be some benifit to pressing cntr-alt-y-b-x-6 while dancing a jig and praying to the rain gods just to save a file. Still I think I''ll just stick with clicking save. ;quote:Original post by Mithrandir  I''m still trying to figure out how people use VI.Yeah, I''m currently at the same stage as you when it comes to unix text editors. ;quote:Original post by Goober King  I know there must be some benifit to pressing cntr-alt-y-b-x-6 while dancing a jig and praying to the rain gods just to save a file.My goddess, how can this poster play video games. Unless you are one of the people who argue against combos in video games, I suggest you not mention that any more.Is it that hard to figure out?^X exits editing mode, to consol mode. Any command you hit then will do something with the file.^X ^S to save,^X ^F to create/open,^X ^C to exitMeta-X exits editing mode to go into macro mode. After hitting Meta-X you enter the macro you wish to use, then each of its arguments.quote:Still I think I''ll just stick with clicking save.If you use EMACS in some manner of XWindows, you can easily enough click file->save. ;quote:Original post by DakeDesu  Well, some of the features of VIM (not to turn this into a holy war) is it is fast and portable, and extenable via the ruby language.Ruby? Since when? ;quote:Original post by Arild Fines  quote:Original post by DakeDesu   Well, some of the features of VIM (not to turn this into a holy war) is it is fast and portable, and extenable via the ruby language.Ruby? Since when?Not sure, but whenever I have installed freeBSD, there has always been an option of vim+ruby<latest version number> ;quote:Original post by DakeDesu  quote:Original post by Goober King   I know there must be some benifit to pressing cntr-alt-y-b-x-6 while dancing a jig and praying to the rain gods just to save a file.My goddess, how can this poster play video games. Unless you are one of the people who argue against combos in video games, I suggest you not mention that any more.Is it that hard to figure out?^X exits editing mode, to consol mode. Any command you hit then will do something with the file.^X ^S to save,^X ^F to create/open,^X ^C to exitMeta-X exits editing mode to go into macro mode. After hitting Meta-X you enter the macro you wish to use, then each of its arguments.quote:Still I think I''ll just stick with clicking save.If you use EMACS in some manner of XWindows, you can easily enough click file->save.   I was more or less refering it my last crack at the command line IV where I got little more that a black screen and no direction as how to do much of anything. For something as basic as a text editor it didn''t seam like it was worth the trouble to learn. I was already happy with MC for my command line adventures which was easy to use from the first second. As for X editors I haven''t realy had any need for them as of yet and I am quite sure the all have save buttons and such.