Aquamacs 1.4 is out | Hacker News Reader

Aquamacs 1.4 is out

aquamacs.org

18 pointsjimbokun17 comments

O emacs wizards and fellow wizardly aspirants: Should I be using this instead of Carbon Emacs?

I used Aquamacs for a while, but reverted to Carbon emacs, because it was easier to make similar to emacs on Linux that I also use regularly. If you don't use emacs anywhere else, Aquamacs would be fine, I think.

I use the exact same Emacs environment on my mac with Carbon Emacs as I use on Unix systems and my windows machine at work. I can't speak for the unportability of Aquamacs, but Carbon Emacs works exactly as I expect so good 'nuff!

Yes. The fonts looks much better in this version. The new tabs are cool, especially if you spend the rest of your day in Safari. It also uses the keyboard in a much more Mac friendly way.

The fonts are easily adjusted in Carbon Emacs too.

How is it friendly to a mac keyboard?

There doesn't seem to be anything new in that respect. In general though, Aquamacs better supports native mac shortcuts like Apple-S, Apple-F, and so on.

Fair argument, but I'd recommend using TextMate then.

Full-screen mode + tabs == happy coding/writing space, for me at least.

Instead of navigating with tabs, you can try this in your .emacs:

(iswitchb-mode 1)

Very speedy buffer-changing that's hard to beat.

Try both and see which you like better. Each is more Mac-like in a different way.

For example, Aquamacs brags that command-O is Mac-like (Open). However, this means that they use option = meta, which means other keystrokes like option-U (umlaut) are not really Mac-like. (Also, Aquamacs doesn't appear to support non-ASCII keyboard layouts at all, though it can open non-ASCII files, while in Carbon Emacs I can type Hiragana and even use the native Kanji selector.) Tradeoffs.

For another, in Emacs the idea of "buffers" and "frames" (Mac windows) are completely independent concepts, while in Mac apps they're basically the same thing. Aquamacs tries to use the Mac system (only one buffer per window frame), but this appears to have some strange consequences, probably because Emacs really wasn't designed for that. (Choose Preferences, and then close that window; the preferences buffer goes away, but the window remains.) Tradeoffs.

Mac OS X and Emacs have very different interfaces, so you can't be perfectly Emacs-like and Mac-like. Each implementation picks a different set of Mac features to obey. I suspect you'll gravitate towards one or the other depending on whether you've used Emacs or Mac OS X longer.

Aquamacs tries to use the Mac system (only one buffer per window frame)

Thanks! That tells me that I really need to stick with Carbon Emacs, because I've been using emacs longer than OS X and such behavior would drive me straight up a wall. :)

As someone has already suggested on this thread: If I really wanted an editor that elegantly blended the emacs style and the Mac style, while refusing to compromise its Mac-like status, I would be using Textmate right now. As it is, I gave up Textmate and went back to emacs, but I do agree that Textmate is a work of art.

Thanks to all for their answers. Happy editing!

The default for Aquamacs is one buffer per window but theres an easily accessable option ( Options > Show Buffer in new Frame ) that you can toggle to get the behavior you want.

Of course, you can use cmd-; to toggle Option between Meta and system (and ESC works as Meta anyway).

Use it in a terminal with no X. Much faster [to use] that way and this has a minimum of clutter. It does cause a problem with some picture intensive things though...

It depends on if your a Mac person using Emacs, or an Emacs person using Mac.

What I mean by that is that Aquamacs does things in a Mac way (e.g., storing preferences in Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/ instead of .emacs, and creating key bindings similar to other Mac apps).

I started using Emacs on Linux, and when I got a Mac, I first started with Aquamacs, but eventually switched just for consistency.

Just remembered something. Another thing that I didn't like (although it's customizable) is that instead of opening a new buffer in a window, Aquamacs' default was to open it in a new frame.

Holy cow -- 120 MB! My question: any good interactive tutorials for learning Emacs? (I'm looking for something like the way learn typing, with repetition, not just a big list of shortcuts.)

Have you tried the online tutorial? It's in the help menu of the GNU build (not sure about "Aquamacs"), or you can run it with "C-h t".

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