On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, John wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>>
>>> Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>>> big a deal any more.
>>>
>>> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>>> and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
>>> is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
>>> Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
>>> entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).
>>
>> Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have
>> one tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several
>> commands, than have one big program that does all.
>>
>> In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out
>> of the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.
>
> I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes. I've
> been using Unix and Unix-adjacent systems for over twenty years: Linux,
> various BSDs, Solaris, Plan 9. At various times I've used emacs, vi,
> acme, and sam as my primary editors. The main thing I think of anymore
> when somebody starts talking about "the unix philosophy" is that nobody
> dares to put a `find` program in Plan 9 because it's too GNU-ish, so we
> all typed `du -a | grep <filename>` and scolded any newbie who dared
> post on the mailing list asking for find.
>
> Anyway, is there such a huge difference between "foo < xyz | bar | baz"
> and "(baz (bar (foo xyz)))"? In both cases you're invoking little bits
> of code, feeding the output of one to another, and it can be just as
> interactive in emacs as in a shell. Does it make such a difference if
> you type :s/foo/bar/g or M-x replace-regexp RET foo RET bar, aside from
> a couple more keystrokes in the latter? (but not many, thanks to
> tab-complete)
>
> After years away, I've been exploring emacs again and there's a lot to
> love in there. In some ways it doesn't feel super Unixy, sure, and
> there's good reason for that: it grew up on a lot of non-Unix systems
> first. But Unix isn't the ultimate evolution of the operating system,
> and Emacs is basically the most coherent vision for a self-contained
> environment which is as flexible/extensible as Unix. It's a spiritual
> successor in some ways to the Lisp machines, where everything is just
> *there* for inspection and evaluation and modification.
>
> I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
> computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
> to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
> wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
> see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
> single-threaded lisp system.
>
>
> john
>
> p.s. try acme too, it's totally different but also a lot of fun.
>

Horses for courses.

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-04-05, Dennis Boone <drb@ihatespam.msu.edu> wrote:
>
>>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself, but
>>> every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>>
>> Thoughts:
>>
>> 1. Current GNU emacs is only 2-3 times the size of vim.
>>
>> 2. Emacs is more than just an editor, it's really intended to be an
>> IDE, a complete working environment and a platform for building all
>> sorts of tools, including file management, email, calendar, task lists
>> and notes, and many other things.
>
> As the old saying goes, it's a nice place to live, but I wouldn't
> want to visit there.

Agreed.

>> 3. Vim is more than just an editor, much like the above.
>
> My fingers speak vim, to the point where if I'm using a different
> editor I'll often see a string of Js appear on the screen when
> I'm trying to move down.

You're not the only one with that problem. ;)

> I did try emacs a couple of times, but its mindset is just
> too foreign for me.

We'll see. Every couple of years I'll have a look and so far nothing has
convinced me to leave the high road of vim. ;)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> On Wed, 3 Apr 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>
>> I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
>> for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
>> plagiarism at some point in
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc
>>
>> I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
>> post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
>> the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
>> facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.
>>
>
> Please do. Sounds like a very interesting claim!

He tells the whole story beginning at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc&t=9896s

Watch at least the whole interval 2:44:56--3:04:26.

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Mike Spencer wrote:

>
> John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> writes:
>
>> I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
>> computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
>> to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
>> wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
>> see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
>> single-threaded lisp system.
>
> 1989: On a visit to a friend at Project Athena, the plunked me in
> front of (what was them) a powerful Unix work station with some
> manuals for a (obviously pre-HTML) multimedia authoring system.
> Default editor was Emacs. I was a CP/M power user and hated Emacs.
> Walked across to Kendall Sq. and bought the hardcopy Emacs manual, read
> it all. Came grudgingly to terms with Emacs.
>
> Fast forward over 30 years. Included some period logging into Unix
> systems using my Osborne I as a dial-up terminal. 1999 conversion to
> Caldera Linux which defaulted to XEmacs and KDE. Quickly downloaded
> GNU Emacs, soon switched to Slackware with twm and have never looked
> back.
>
> I now use Emacs for email, news, shell and file management,
> occasionally for writing a bit of C, Perl or shell scripts. I would
> be crippled without it.
>
> Every time I upgrade my Slackware system, I install the most recent
> Emacs and try it. After hours of unsuccessfully trying to fix or
> eliminate features that I hate -- abandonment of RMAIL,
> unreadable standout colors, mouse stuff -- I revert to 20.7.2 that I
> compiled in 1999.
>
> Yes, I do know a bit of Lisp, once wrote a simple-minded embodiment of
> Ashby's "homeostat" in XLisp, but have only tweaked Emacs lisp a
> couple of very elementary time. Brain too old, perhaps, to really
> beat up Emacs Lisp.

This sounds like me with my email. ;) I use alpine, and I've tweaked it
with scriptable command short cuts, I've written a news to maildir
converter to give its news reading capability a boost, I have integrated
it with scripts to give me rss feeds into my email, and if I so wish, it
can fetch news articles for me and send them to me as email.

Friends and family are spooked by this behaviour, but I can't help it. ;)

On a more philosophical note, I love the fact that the software is written
in such a way as to make all of the above possible for someone with very
general computer skills. I don't have to be a professional programmer to
achieve it. =)

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> writes:
>>I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes. I've
>>been using Unix and Unix-adjacent systems for over twenty years: Linux,
>>various BSDs, Solaris, Plan 9. At various times I've used emacs, vi,
>>acme, and sam as my primary editors. The main thing I think of anymore
>>when somebody starts talking about "the unix philosophy" is that nobody
>>dares to put a `find` program in Plan 9 because it's too GNU-ish, so we
>>all typed `du -a | grep <filename>` and scolded any newbie who dared
>>post on the mailing list asking for find.
>
> Gnu-ish? find(1) predates GNU.
>

Ah but by the time the holy wars were raging on 9fans to protect The
Sacred Plan 9 Philosophy, GNU tools were dominant and since GNU utils
tend to have more flags than any other version they make a good standard
to rally against.

john

On 2024-04-05, John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> wrote:
> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>>
>>> Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>>> big a deal any more.
>>>
>>> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>>> and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
>>> is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
>>> Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
>>> entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).
>>
>> Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have
>> one tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several
>> commands, than have one big program that does all.
>>
>> In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out
>> of the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.
>
> I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes. I've
> been using Unix and Unix-adjacent systems for over twenty years: Linux,
> various BSDs, Solaris, Plan 9. At various times I've used emacs, vi,
> acme, and sam as my primary editors. The main thing I think of anymore
> when somebody starts talking about "the unix philosophy" is that nobody
> dares to put a `find` program in Plan 9 because it's too GNU-ish, so we
> all typed `du -a | grep <filename>` and scolded any newbie who dared
> post on the mailing list asking for find.
>
> Anyway, is there such a huge difference between "foo < xyz | bar | baz"
> and "(baz (bar (foo xyz)))"? In both cases you're invoking little bits
> of code, feeding the output of one to another, and it can be just as
> interactive in emacs as in a shell. Does it make such a difference if
> you type :s/foo/bar/g or M-x replace-regexp RET foo RET bar, aside from
> a couple more keystrokes in the latter? (but not many, thanks to
> tab-complete)
>
> After years away, I've been exploring emacs again and there's a lot to
> love in there. In some ways it doesn't feel super Unixy, sure, and
> there's good reason for that: it grew up on a lot of non-Unix systems
> first. But Unix isn't the ultimate evolution of the operating system,
> and Emacs is basically the most coherent vision for a self-contained
> environment which is as flexible/extensible as Unix. It's a spiritual
> successor in some ways to the Lisp machines, where everything is just
> *there* for inspection and evaluation and modification.
>
> I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
> computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
> to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
> wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
> see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
> single-threaded lisp system.
>
>
> john
>
> p.s. try acme too, it's totally different but also a lot of fun.

EMacs and GNU borrow a lot from ITS and Emacs (and the bundled Lisp)

On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:27:16 +0000, John wrote:

> I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes.

“Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl.”
-- Rob Pike

<https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pike-responds>

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 17:04:18 +0200, D wrote:

> Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have one
> tool that does one thing well.

That was never true of the Unix system as a whole. All those small pieces
that “do one thing and do it well” could not have existed without the help
of much bigger pieces underneath, offering a wider range of omnibus
functionality. Like the kernel itself, or the shell, or the X server.

For example, you can do simple things in a few lines of Bash code, only
because Bash packs so much functionality that you can call on in those few
lines.

Think of Emacs as not so much an editor, as an editing engine, and you get
the idea. That underlying engine lets you do powerful things in just a few
lines of Elisp code.

The often-reviled systemd also embodies this same idea: it builds in a lot
of functionality that has been reinvented so many times, precisely so a
service definition can be done concisely and robustly in just a few lines
of directives, every one of which means something. Compare this with the
lines and lines of boilerplate that regularly gets copied and pasted from
one sysvinit script to another.

“What does this bit do?”
“Never mind. Put it all in, just in case.”

On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:39:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> ... its mindset is just too foreign for me.

Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the current
insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first character,
or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs, and every GUI
editor designed for normal people.

This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
you want to insert before the “current” character, or after it? In all
those other editors, there is no “current” character.

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:39:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> ... its mindset is just too foreign for me.
>
> Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the current
> insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first character,
> or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs, and every GUI
> editor designed for normal people.
>
> This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
> you want to insert before the “current” character, or after it? In all
> those other editors, there is no “current” character.
>

I find it funny that you argue against someones subjective opinion. It
means nothing for that person regardless of argument. Same goes for me. =)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:
> This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
> while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
>
>--8323328-1611439905-1712420973=:10296
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
>
>
>
>On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:39:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> ... its mindset is just too foreign for me.
>>
>> Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the current
>> insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first character,
>> or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs, and every GUI
>> editor designed for normal people.
>>
>> This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
>> you want to insert before the “current” character, or after it? In all
>> those other editors, there is no “current” character.
>>
>
>I find it funny that you argue against someones subjective opinion.

I find his constant arguing rather tiresome, myself.

On 2024-04-05, John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> wrote:
> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>>
>>> Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>>> big a deal any more.
>>>
>>> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>>> and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
>>> is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
>>> Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
>>> entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).
>>
>> Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have
>> one tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several
>> commands, than have one big program that does all.
>>
>> In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out
>> of the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.
>
> I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes. I've
> been using Unix and Unix-adjacent systems for over twenty years: Linux,
> various BSDs, Solaris, Plan 9. At various times I've used emacs, vi,
> acme, and sam as my primary editors. The main thing I think of anymore
> when somebody starts talking about "the unix philosophy" is that nobody
> dares to put a `find` program in Plan 9 because it's too GNU-ish, so we
> all typed `du -a | grep <filename>` and scolded any newbie who dared
> post on the mailing list asking for find.
>
> Anyway, is there such a huge difference between "foo < xyz | bar | baz"
> and "(baz (bar (foo xyz)))"? In both cases you're invoking little bits
> of code, feeding the output of one to another, and it can be just as
> interactive in emacs as in a shell. Does it make such a difference if
> you type :s/foo/bar/g or M-x replace-regexp RET foo RET bar, aside from
> a couple more keystrokes in the latter? (but not many, thanks to
> tab-complete)
>
> After years away, I've been exploring emacs again and there's a lot to
> love in there. In some ways it doesn't feel super Unixy, sure, and
> there's good reason for that: it grew up on a lot of non-Unix systems
> first. But Unix isn't the ultimate evolution of the operating system,
> and Emacs is basically the most coherent vision for a self-contained
> environment which is as flexible/extensible as Unix. It's a spiritual
> successor in some ways to the Lisp machines, where everything is just
> *there* for inspection and evaluation and modification.
>
> I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
> computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
> to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
> wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
> see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
> single-threaded lisp system.

I think I can agree on that. Also in the light of the current "AI thing",
which, FAFAIK, is closely related to the "compulsive programmers" who
enjoy the concepts of EMACS very much.
I for myself recognise the urge to now and then try emacs, but every
time I come to the conclusion that I'm simply too much of a imperative
guy who enjoys using Vim when it comes to day-to-day editing tasks.

> john
>
> p.s. try acme too, it's totally different but also a lot of fun.

Haha, that's on my list also, and even on my system via "plan9port",
but it simply cannot match the default functionality of Vim. One needs
to adopt a very different approach to editing, and I'm inclined to think
that it really is outdated. Concepts however do / did land in other
software, and that's good.

Cheers,

Bob

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>> This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
>> while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
>>
>> --8323328-1611439905-1712420973=:10296
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:39:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... its mindset is just too foreign for me.
>>>
>>> Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the current
>>> insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first character,
>>> or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs, and every GUI
>>> editor designed for normal people.
>>>
>>> This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
>>> you want to insert before the ???current??? character, or after it? In all
>>> those other editors, there is no ???current??? character.
>>>
>>
>> I find it funny that you argue against someones subjective opinion.
>
> I find his constant arguing rather tiresome, myself.
>
>
Touché!

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 18:29:31 +0200, D wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the
>> current insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first
>> character, or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs,
>> and every GUI editor designed for normal people.
>>
>> This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
>> you want to insert before the “current” character, or after it? In all
>> those other editors, there is no “current” character.
>>
> I find it funny that you argue against someones subjective opinion.

Facts >> subjective opinion.

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 18:29:31 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the
>>> current insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first
>>> character, or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs,
>>> and every GUI editor designed for normal people.
>>>
>>> This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
>>> you want to insert before the “current” character, or after it? In all
>>> those other editors, there is no “current” character.
>>>
>> I find it funny that you argue against someones subjective opinion.
>
> Facts >> subjective opinion.
>

Exactly my point! Thank you.

In article <uumo48$28n4$1@gal.iecc.com>, johnl@taugh.com says...
> It's not exactly new, but there's a commercial version of Emacs called
> Epsilon that I have been using since the 1980s (that's not a typo.) It
> is small and fast because it is written in C. Its extension language
> eel looks a lot like C. It costs money and is totally worth it. I
> originally used it on MS-DOS, now on FreeBSD, Linux, and MacOS.
>
> You can find free evaluation versions (fully functional, time limited) here https://www.lugaru.com/

I hadn't thought about Epsilon in years until the other day when I
mentioned it to someone in another forum. AFter that discussion, I went
poking around the net and discovered that it was still around via the
link you posted. I was somewhat surprised (but gratified) that it was
still being actively supported.

Anyway, Epsilon was my introduction to emacs, and I used it on a daily
basis in 1990-91 in conjunction with LaTeX to typeset mathematics books.
IIRC a few of the default Epsilon keybindings were slightly different
than those in most flavors of emacs running on Unix platforms, but when
I switched from MS-DOS/Epsilon to SunOS/emacs a year or so later,
virtually all of the common emacs editor commands were already firmly
embedded in my muscle memory.

--
Dave

On 2024-04-05, Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>
> John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> writes:
>
>> I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
>> computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
>> to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
>> wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
>> see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
>> single-threaded lisp system.
>
> 1989: On a visit to a friend at Project Athena, the plunked me in
> front of (what was them) a powerful Unix work station with some
> manuals for a (obviously pre-HTML) multimedia authoring system.
> Default editor was Emacs. I was a CP/M power user and hated Emacs.
> Walked across to Kendall Sq. and bought the hardcopy Emacs manual, read
> it all. Came grudgingly to terms with Emacs.
>
> Fast forward over 30 years. Included some period logging into Unix
> systems using my Osborne I as a dial-up terminal. 1999 conversion to
> Caldera Linux which defaulted to XEmacs and KDE. Quickly downloaded
> GNU Emacs, soon switched to Slackware with twm and have never looked
> back.
>
> I now use Emacs for email, news, shell and file management,
> occasionally for writing a bit of C, Perl or shell scripts. I would
> be crippled without it.
>
> Every time I upgrade my Slackware system, I install the most recent
> Emacs and try it. After hours of unsuccessfully trying to fix or
> eliminate features that I hate -- abandonment of RMAIL,
> unreadable standout colors, mouse stuff -- I revert to 20.7.2 that I
> compiled in 1999.
>
> Yes, I do know a bit of Lisp, once wrote a simple-minded embodiment of
> Ashby's "homeostat" in XLisp, but have only tweaked Emacs lisp a
> couple of very elementary time. Brain too old, perhaps, to really
> beat up Emacs Lisp.
>

Just run M-x customize-themes and choose a simple but usable theme.
Some dark ones are very nice. Also, I think you have the classic
green emacs theme in ELPA.

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>> This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
>> while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
>>
>>--8323328-1611439905-1712420973=:10296
>>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
>>
>>
>>
>>On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:39:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... its mindset is just too foreign for me.
>>>
>>> Every editor other than the vi/vim family has the concept that the current
>>> insertion point lies _between_ characters (or before the first character,
>>> or after the last one), not _on_ them. This includes Emacs, and every GUI
>>> editor designed for normal people.
>>>
>>> This is why the vi/vim family needs _two_ different insert commands: do
>>> you want to insert before the “current†character, or after it? In all
>>> those other editors, there is no “current†character.
>>>
>>
>>I find it funny that you argue against someones subjective opinion.
>
> I find his constant arguing rather tiresome, myself.

I believe Lawrence is just citing a fact, not arguing about anything.

I'm not arguing here either:

The fact that vi doesn't start out just typing what you want bothered me
too, that was one of the reasons I looked at Emacs.

I stuck with Emacs all these years because I can customize every
aspect of it's behavior.

Some people like vi, some Emacs. That's fine with me.

--
Dan Espen

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
>> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>
> There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
> to try it myself.

I've been using it for a while now. I first tried it after a book on vim
recommended it, and it's been a couple of years now IIRC, and I haven't
switched my "vi" alias back to regular vim.

I'm not sure I'd be a good advocate for neovim. I just use it and it
does the things I expect out of vim. :-)

greymaus <maus@d1.org> writes:

> On 2024-04-04, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
>> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
>>> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>>
>> There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
>> to try it myself.
>>
>
> There was an emacs for slackware that was very good,forget what it was
> called. Every now and again I have the urge to install slackware, but
> debian, afaik it is more up yo date, and then, again I remember, there
> was something previous to Stallman, (microemacs)

There have been a bunch of them. I've used jove in the past, and years
ago I worked with a bunch of people who liked Chet's Editor.

https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/

I've mainly used vi and vim, but I also use emacs for gnus.

Joe in "jmacs" mode is evidently pretty good, but I've never done more
than start it and then C-x C-c :-)

Bud Frede <frede@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
>> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
>>> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>>
>> There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
>> to try it myself.
>
> I've been using it for a while now. I first tried it after a book on vim
> recommended it, and it's been a couple of years now IIRC, and I haven't
> switched my "vi" alias back to regular vim.
>
> I'm not sure I'd be a good advocate for neovim. I just use it and it
> does the things I expect out of vim. :-)
>
>

That’s the best possible recommendation for any app.

--
Pete

Bud Frede <frede@mouse-potato.com> writes:

> greymaus <maus@d1.org> writes:
>
>> There was an emacs for slackware that was very good,forget what it was
>> called. Every now and again I have the urge to install slackware, but
>> debian, afaik it is more up yo date, and then, again I remember, there
>> was something previous to Stallman, (microemacs)

AFAIK, Slackware has long supplied GNU Emacs. When I first moved to
Linux, I laded on Caldera that supplied XEmacs. Downloaded GNU Emacs
20.7, compiled it. Then switched to Slackware but have been using that
same executable now for over 20 years. (Newer versions that come w/
Slackware updates have too many unwanted "features" and newer
kernels/libs haven't broken the old executable.)

> There have been a bunch of them. I've used jove in the past, and years
> ago I worked with a bunch of people who liked Chet's Editor.

I spent about 7 years using MS-DOS between CP/M and Linux. I used
Jove all the time with DOS, allowing me to pretend -- most of the time
-- that it was Emacs which I had come to like on assorted remote Unix
accounts. I still use Jove on rare occasions.

> https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

On 26 Apr 2024 02:23:00 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote:

> AFAIK, Slackware has long supplied GNU Emacs.

Has Slackware caught up with Wayland yet? I just installed the Wayland-
compatible Emacs build on my Debian Unstable system, and that has been
working quite well.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

> On 26 Apr 2024 02:23:00 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>> AFAIK, Slackware has long supplied GNU Emacs.
>
> Has Slackware caught up with Wayland yet?

No. But I'm a trailing-edge-of-technology kind of guy so I'm good
with that. (I use twm window manager, have a hand pump at the
kitchen sink and my working electric toaster is 111 years old.)

> I just installed the Wayland- compatible Emacs build on my Debian
> Unstable system, and that has been working quite well.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

On 26 Apr 2024 15:55:27 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 26 Apr 2024 02:23:00 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote:
>>
>>> AFAIK, Slackware has long supplied GNU Emacs.
>>
>> Has Slackware caught up with Wayland yet?
>
> No. But I'm a trailing-edge-of-technology kind of guy so I'm good with
> that.

You do realize Slackware now includes PulseAudio, right?

> (I use twm window manager, have a hand pump at the kitchen sink
> and my working electric toaster is 111 years old.)

Electric? Don’t you have a stove?