Emacs and Screen | Hacker News Reader

Emacs and Screen

emacsen.livejournal.com

30 pointstwampss16 comments

Don't do this. Instead, start emacs. Run M-x server-start. Now to edit a file, just say "emacsclient -t filename". You are instantly connected to your running emacs session, in the terminal you are currently working in. You can have an arbitrary number of these. C-x C-c closes the instance you are working in, not every instance.

I just run "emacs --daemon" when I log in, "emacsclient -c" to get my main emacs X frame, and then "emacsclient -t foo.bar" when I need to edit something. (Actually, I alias "emacsclient -t" to "ec", so "ec foo.bar".)

If you don't want to install Emacs for some reason, "mg" is a much better choice than vi or nano.

Or "vim". "vi" is the editor wars' straw man. Never heard of mg.

When people say vi, they mean vim.

Unless they actually mean vi. Not all vi implementations are Vim, especially those on Unices.

mg is a smaller, only slightly configurable editor that behaves like Emacs's defaults.

This doesn't solve one problem that sends me running to nano a lot: having very old Emacs versions (usually 21) on the server that don't work with my configuration.

You could always install a recent version of Emacs yourself even if you're not an admin, can't you? Also, don't forget the options for remote editing.

I am using the TRAMP support instead from my desktop Emacs which runs all the time. TRAMP support within Emacs is very good, aside of the dired support all the vc commands work on the remote machines, too.

I use emacs for long haul editing, but vi for quick edits and sysadmin work.

That's just silly. mg is much nicer.

http://packages.debian.org/sid/mg

According to what criteria?

That it works more like Emacs than Vi, which is an advantage to someone who uses Emacs "for long haul editing".

Good point, thanks for elaborating.

How it it better than jove? (Just curious).

$ emacs -q works pretty well for quick edits too

Hooray for gedit!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com