in reply to Taking the emacs plunge

Go for the GUI version of emacs wherever you go. Being able to properly use the mouse is really nice when it comes to doing editing work, as opposed to straight code/text writing. The advantages of syntax coloring aren't to be overlooked either. (Even with as simple a thing as POD-mode, the coloring's nice)

Being able to use emacs in a terminal environment's a good thing, but I'd look at it the same way I look at knowing terminal-mode vi--learn enough to get by if you need to in an emergency. (which is a good reason to learn basic vi, regardless of how you feel about it. It's available just about everywhere, and is about the lightest-weight editor you'll find for those "I'm editing config files at runlevel s with-just a bare root partition and no swap" times)

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Re: Re: Taking the emacs plunge
by drewbie (Chaplain) on Apr 26, 2002 at 19:32 UTC
    Being able to properly use the mouse is really nice when it comes to doing editing work

    I agree with your statement, but I'd also like to be comfortable enough that I don't have to use the mouse. I'm going on the assumption that there are people who do not use a mouse, and that a mouse is not essential to emacs use. You touch on this in your next paragraph. And I assumed that syntax highlighting & parens matching are included. I really don't like living without those features.

    And I do know vi somewhat as well. There are tons of times when I need to quickly edit a config file and vi is the way to go. And one client is hosted on a RaQ whose load shoots up when I run cvs commands. I shudder to think that an emacs session would do to the poor box. ;-)

[reply]
      I agree with your statement, but I'd also like to be comfortable enough that I don't have to use the mouse. I'm going on the assumption that there are people who do not use a mouse, and that a mouse is not essential to emacs use. You touch on this in your next paragraph. And I assumed that syntax highlighting & parens matching are included. I really don't like living without those features.

      Oh, I don't use the mouse for most things, but it's nice to have handy when you do need it. You do need a gui interface of some sort for syntax coloring to work, unless things have really changed recently. Which they might, this being emacs and all.

      Paren/brace/bracket matching works regardless of how you invoke emacs, so that'll be there however you use it, os you'll be fine there. (Though using it over slow lines is a pain. OTOH, nobody does emacs over 9600 baud links these days...)

      There isn't anything in emacs that requires mouse usage, so don't worry about that. There are things that the mouse makes easier, certainly, but it's not required.

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Re: Re: Taking the emacs plunge
by belg4mit (Prior) on Apr 26, 2002 at 19:51 UTC
    I haven't used a mouse in emacs since the first week I started. In the beginning I did for the left-mark, right-copy, middle-paste. But I got over that, especially once I figured out it was an X thing. On rare occasion I might use middle-paste, but C-y is more natural ;-)

    The only issue I've ever had with terminal emacs is that in some terminal emulators ^H/Delete/Backspace is borked, and you end up in the help system.

    --
    perl -pew "s/\b;([mnst])/'$1/g"

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