The One True Text Editor | Hacker News Reader

The One True Text Editor

eecs.harvard.edu

17 pointscwb32 comments

I consider it strange that he begins his Vi/Vim tutorial with a page of (bad) Emacs bashing. I mean, he obviously knows the virtues of his editor (I skimmed the next few pages), but why begin it with comments like this one:

    > Emacs is based in Lisp. 'Nuff said.

What is that supposed to mean? You can critize Elisp for not having lexically scoped variables (although there is lexical-let in 'cl) or tail-call optimization. But the above "statement" sounds as if he has never looked at Elisp code. Btw. if you are new to Emacs, make sure to have the sources installed as well - you can then look at the implementation of every function with

    C-h f function-name

and then selecting the filename (this is also true of the functions and special forms written in C). If you do this for a while, you will recognize that the Emacs programming model makes sense - and it's not so much because of or in spite of Lisp - it's more because of the Emacs-specific abstractions (point, buffers, markers, buffer-local variables, ...) that are quite different from the usual paradigms most of us are used to, but nevertheless very powerful for text-munging.

    > Vi commands are a Unix standard.

yeah, but bash (for example) and other programs using the Readline library default to Emacs keybindings...

    > Cleaner interface. Only one line is used
    > up for commands; everything else is your text.
    > Easy to read. Good.

ok, my Emacs uses two lines (one for the modeline and one for the minibuffer). Of course, ed has a much cleaner interface than both Vi/Emacs...

Don't take it so seriously :)

> Of course, ed has a much cleaner interface than both Vi/Emacs...

"Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity."

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html

If someone argues that Emacs is based in Lisp the you come back with the much stronger retort that Vim is scripted in Vim Script.

At least the people who write scripts for Emacs do it because they like the editor and enjoy extending it with (Emacs)Lisp. The people who write scripts for Vim do it because they love their editor more then they can't stand Vim Script.

Being another hopeless victim of modal editing, I do have sometimes those "I press a key and it appears on the screen?! What is this madness!" moments when using other editors. However, I do not think that Vim is The One True Text Editor. Actually, I am envious of Emacs users for their flexible, programmable text editor (operating system? CLI application framework?), but couldn't make the switch yet, I really do miss the Vim interface.

Are modes like Viper (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode) helpful when switching from vim to emacs?

Helpful for my wrists

Viper + vimpulse.el work great for me. Using Emacs with Vim key bindings is excellent.

vimpulse.el extends ViperMode with Vim features. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/vimpulse

I tried to switch to emacs around a year ago. I even posted a thread here labeled Ask YC: Why is emacs a great editor? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=313025) Even though I got some great feedback and lots of tips and tricks I never got friendly with the editor. The learning curve was simply too steep, the way of doing things too arcane and the usability too bad.

I'm not denouncing emacs, a lot of people I hold in very high regard would commit suicide if they couldn't use it, I'm just saying that emacs is like Richard Stallman: An indisputable genius, but to work with him you have to do things his way, and share his beliefs about the world. Which I don't.

Vi's learning curve is very steep too. As an emacs user, I sometimes use vi when pairing with a vi colleague. I've tried to learn some more advanced vi functionalities, but I always think the learning curve is not worth leaving emacs behind.

I'm thinking that the issue is rather that when you learn your first editor (emacs or vi), you don't have other good text editors as reference so you swallow the learning curve and keep pushing. When learning the second one, its harder to justify the learning effort.

Over the years, I've tried emacs several times. Then I tried VIM, and it clicked with me. I think some people's brains click with VIM and others click with Emacs.

Wasn't there a rule about not introducing classic flamewar subjects ?

There are ony two subjects contending for the top spot in 'the most flamewar attraction power graph', the first is significant whitespace in python, the second is Vi vs Emacs (and to avoid starting a flamewar by choosing a particular order, I'll repeat them alphabetically, Emacs vs Vi).

The rest of the subjects (MySQl vs postgresql, Windows vs Linux and so on) are mild by comparison.

I'm wearing my Vi-versus-Emacs tee-shirt right now and am ready to start brawling if anyone else is. I thought all the Vi users were either dead or in old veterans homes.

I hope that t-shirt is flame retardant...

http://imgur.com/g48Se.jpg

Sorry. I submitted it because of the tutorial, not the (patently) weak Emacs bashing... Maybe I should have changed the title. Also, it's by the same guy who wrote the excellent "Understanding Git" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=531517) tutorial.

what amazes me with emacs is that every time I learn something new AND use it. Recently I've found out about irc in it, I use eshell constantly, now I've found out about gomoku.

Emacs is a fantastic operating system.

One day there will be an 'emacs machine' that boots straight into emacs, current unices are just used as scaffolding during this unfortunate but necessary stage.

EDIT: Thanks for the downmod, in this topic it is expected I guess... :)

Here is the reference for the quote:

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/gnu_emacs_22_wor...

I'm an Emacs user but I do sometimes commit the heresy of looking at Vi and wondering. Not that I'd ever want to leave the wonderful environment I have in Emacs with my large (and growing) collection of customizations but the modal editing and compossable commands do look like they could be pretty cool once you get used to them ("7 habbits of effective text editing" shows some pretty cool stuff).

So anyway, has anyone used Viper much? I notice it has WIZARD mode which claims to keep all of your Emacs customizations and keys working. So is Viper just for Vi refugees in an Emacs world or might it be useful for a Emacs user wanting to see what it's all about?

It is not for Vi refugees. It works too much like Emacs.

As a hardcore Emacs user, I am seriously tempted by Viper. It is all the good stuff about vi, but without having to use vi (or give up anything in Emacs). I have tried it, and it is not exactly what I want, but it is certainly close. (I have used Vim, and it is everything that I don't want.)

Think of Viper as vi + emacs, where Vim is vi + <something else>. This is why Vim users don't like Viper.

Many times that I hear about Viper, someone brings up Vimpulse which is supposedly more VIM-like where Viper is vi-like.

I do most of my editing in emacs. I tried fairly hard to learn vi back in the late 1990s (even buying the O'Relly book for help), but I cannot get the habit of separate command and writing modes; I very frequently forget about modes altogether, and even when I don't I forget which mode I'm in until I try to type something.

I usually have several emacs sessions suspended and ready for me to work on with an fg command, but I have also written a script that lets me easily use cat to append to or create a new text file from the command line, when I just want to add a little without waiting for a new emacs session to load.

You should look into using emacsclient. Multiple sessions aren't really necessary unless you're on different hosts or having stability issues. I personally have never had stability issues with the latest official release.

Vim rocks!...when emacs is not available.

He spent an hour trying to quit? Did it ever occur to him to use C-z? That's pretty standard in Unix, and would have dropped him back to the terminal so he could kill it easily. He's acting like C-x C-c is somehow WAY more arcane than :q!. To each his own, I suppose.

> Emacs is based in Lisp. 'Nuff said.

'Nuff said indeed.

Pfff, just type your stuff in stdin.

Emacs is for people who want to have a versatile do-it-all environment.

Vim is for people who want to process text efficiently.

Typically, software with such a high level of integration sucks. It's a collection of mediocre tools rather than one excellent tool.

My combination of Vim + irssi + mutt + ddd is greater than any emacs tools as they are cherry picked to be the best at their job rather than the most integrated. I know. I binned emacs for them.

Emacs is effectively a somewhat less harsh form of vendor lock in.

Wow, a lot of unsubstantiated "facts" to justify your personal preference. Let me guess, the color green is better than the color orange because your eyes are more sensitive to green? After all, it's your favorite right?

Anyway, I disagree on your comments about integration. Vim, irssi, mutt, and ddd all use separate keybinding semantics. Switch programs, and everything you know about using your software is thrown out the window -- now you are doing something totally new. Repeat several times a day.

Integration affords the possibilities for greater reuse. I wrote an extension for managing "projects". Thanks to eshell, I can easily manage my projects from the command-line now, not just when I am editing files in emacs. (And, there are no hacks involved; no forking a process every time I want my editor to open another file in the project, as would be required if you wanted to do this with vi and bash.)

It's a collection of mediocre tools rather than one excellent tool.

Maybe the stuff you write is...

How can it be a fact if it's not substantiated?

It's all down to opinion, which I chose to share. Now some replies which are all my opinion again.

a) All my keybindings are approximately vim-like. Mutt uses vim as an editor. I use the mouse for ddd (nail me to a cross for my sins). irssi mainly involves: type stuff, whack enter.

b) Blue is my favourite colour (particularly oceandeep.vim).

c) Revelation: I avoid "project management" tools. That is what the filesystem and the related tools are for.

d) Regarding forking, UNIX was designed to be small utilities working together to build systems greater than the sum of it's parts, not one monolithic environment. Otherwise they wouldn't have added the fork() syscall would they? Hence, in vim, whack bang (!) and type a shell command. Pipe stuff in, get stuff out.

e) I admit, my writing style is terrible.

..zzZZ

The classic "Unix is many small tools and Emacs is one big tool" argument is well known, but rarely substantiated.

Emacs tools are not any more tightly coupled because they're written in Emacs Lisp than your tools are because they're written in C.

In fact, just as all your tools run in a terminal, all my Emacs tools run in buffers (in Emacs). Speaking loosely, Emacs is the embodiment of Unix: it has many tools written by the community, some of which are installed by default, and you can choose which you want to run that best suit your needs. "Integration" doesn't really fit into the picture.

For example, Emacs has both ERC and rcirc. I use ERC, but my point is that there are choices. Emacs has several mail readers (Wanderlust, GNUs, mew, etc) and several terminal emulators. Eshell provides one type of feel, treating your shell as a buffer. Term provides a more classic terminal emulator feel, when you don't want to treat your term like a text editing session.

As to your "! is text in, text out", try M-! in Emacs. I daresay Emacs has fairly robust system integration as well. I have run irssi from term buffers for fun. Even more ironic is running vi in a term buffer. In short, it may be more useful for you to think of Emacs as a replacement for your terminal emulator than as a replacement for vi.

Knowing vi means that on any machine you have the ability to edit text... not a bad trade-off, if you ask me. It's also a nice break if you're tired of a Macintosh or Vista UAC asking you every ten seconds if you really want to do what you just tried to do.

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