Talk:Emacs

Link to downloads

A good link to a list of binaries would be appreciated (especially for Windows as emacs is installed in Unix/Linux anyhow) --Hirzel

I have added a link to the GNU Emacs FAQ For Windows, which has instructions for getting the Windows binaries. I think it is inadvisable to link directly to the binaries, or even FTP directories, as those are subject to change. ---CYD

Thank you! --Hirzel

Wikipedia emacs mode needed...

What we need is a Wikipedia Emacs mode, that allows pages to be viewed and edited with the greatest of ease...

Wikipedia mode for Emacs. --Fredrik (talk) 18:38, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Emacs First Aid or Using Emacs

This section should not expand into a howto. I would be willing to go there but for that it does not feel encyclopedic. I suggest the bare minimum be included. I see nothing wrong with titleing the section "Using Emacs", and having it be a minimal introduction, but my preference would be to have the table titled "Emacs First Aid" and have it contain the 'get out of trouble' commands. To that end I'd include only the original 3 appearing in the table save-buffers-kill-emacs, undo, and abort. Seems to me that expanding the table beyond this to include file-find, save-some-buffers, kill-buffer means that C-x 1 delete-other-windows, C-x o other-window, C-x b switch-to-buffer, C-x C-b list-buffers must also be included.

So, should the table be "First Aid" or a repertoire of basic commands?

The trouble with emacs is that occasionally you wander into some part of the program you're not familiar with and 'get stuck'. This is why it's useful to include some "First Aid" in the Wikipediea, the goal is a useful article. Delete-other-windows, other-window, switch-to-buffer,and list-buffers are very handy to get out of trouble as you can fairly easily accidentally get into 'buffer land' before you know what to do there. I'd include these in a 'First Aid' table, but the question is where to stop. My initial critera, leading to the list: save & exit, undo, and abort, was to consider what situation could not be recovered with just "save & exit".

Perhaps a link to a short list of emacs commands should be included in the external references. Googling for "emacs cheat sheet" comes up with some useful ones. (My vote for least appreciated command goes to C-x q.)

I think that a link to external non-encyclopedic information should be used rather than including it in the encyclopedia.

Additionally, I found two errors: an omission of a word in the Internals section (apparently the author felt that no verb fit the purpose, and thus decided against using one); and the fact that Emacs considers multiple buffers in the same frame to be windows. The term frame was used incorrectly in that regard. A text-mode Emacs has exactly one frame, while a graphical-mode Emacs has one or more frames, which are displayed as separate windows on the user's system; Emacs 'windows' are separate buffers visible simultaneously within one frame.

Actually, text-mode Emacs does support multiple frames, at least as Emacs understands them. All frame-related commands will work. Of course, only one frame is visible at a time. In practice, it is similar to having a set of easily recallable window configurations. 192.88.209.232

That sounds like a project for WikiBooks! --Maru (talk) Contribs 18:43, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Emacs is self-documenting. It contains its own help system

'Self documenting'? Surely not? Containing its own help system surely doesn't mean that it 'self documents'? --The Recycling Troll 02:31, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Self documenting" has been part of the Emacs description for, approximately, ever, including back when build-in documentation was the rare exception. If you feel the phrase is wrong, you need to come up with better arguments than "surely". --Per Abrahamsen 06:47, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)

His comment is based on the fact that emacs is not self documenting in the sense that emacs itself does not write its own documentation, but rather the people that maintain it. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:23, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)

Indeed. The meaning of 'self-documenting' has changed; most applications have help files now. (The help files for vim are now larger than the application ...) --David Gerard 15:21, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I was not aware of this new meaning. Is Javadoc code considered self-documenting? Or "literate programming" in general? Apart from a large "help file", Emacs is also "self-documenting" in the sense that each function and variable has an easily available documentation string which is part of the code, rather than in a seperate file. Emacs will even show some documentations for a function that lack such a string, like the fact that it exists, where it is defined, and what arguments it takes. --Per Abrahamsen 16:14, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)

The Church of Emacs

This article should make at least a passing reference to the Church of EMACS and the Editor war. Or has the see also category at the bottom of articles dissapeared? --metta, The Sunborn ☸ 13:00, 5 Oct

Editor wars is linked in the intro. Church of EMACS is a redirect to Editor wars. --David Gerard 15:21, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess. I would prefer it if there was an actual mention that there was parody religion based on the editor. However, it is perfectly fine as is. --metta, The Sunborn ☸ 22:59, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Emacs and hypertext

Could anyone tell when and by whom Emacs began to do with hypertext? --KYPark 16:19, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Emacs uses the tops-20 hypertext system, so I suspect it was in that period it was added. --Per Abrahamsen 07:28, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Confusing

"Some people make a distinction between the lower-case word emacs, which is used to refer to Emacs-like editors (particularly GNU Emacs and XEmacs), and the capitalized word Emacs, which is used to refer to GNU Emacs."

Is GNU Emacs emacs or Emacs ? --Humpback 01:48, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I haven't seen the distinction used as described in the article. I rewrote it as I use the distinction. --Per Abrahamsen 07:35, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Plural

Would it be appropriate to note that the only plural given by the Collins English Dictionary is emacsen? --Twid 20:29, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Added.--Per Abrahamsen 07:26, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Can you explain: does the Collins English Dictionary have an entry for "emacs", and state the plural in that entry? or does it say "stuff ending in acs can be pluralised by adding en"? or something else? The current sentence implies that there is a dictionary entry for "emacs" - I find that hard to believe, so I was going to remove it and ask for a reference to be cited if it's to be re-added. --Gronky 19:44, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/23791b9653685c08 --Per Abrahamsen 21:03, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. I've noted it in the article. --Gronky 00:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

mg

I'm going to revert the reference to mg just inserted in the first section. There are zillions of light-weight Emacs clones around. If they should be mentioned, it should be in the history section, or in a separate section (maybe even a separate article about Emacs clones, with a reference from here). --Per Abrahamsen 06:54, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Instead of deleting mg, I moved it to a list of noteworthy light reimplementations in the end of the history section. --Per Abrahamsen 07:22, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Most portable?

The article claims EMACS is one of the most portable non-trivial programs. While it may be one of the most ported - due to great desires on the part of its users - I'm not sure that portable (easy to port) is quite true. Certainly not for a long time - does anyone remember the dump/undump process of building Emacs, which was completely UNPORTABLE and had to be rewritten for every machine architecture/operating system combination? (I have heard that Emacs no longer requires this process - is this correct?) --—Morven 19:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Even if the assembler code and the custom crt0.o file have been removed, Emacs is no more portable than autoconf based programs in general. I changed the word to ported, which is better anyway. The paragraph talks about how many platforms Emacs runs on, not how easy it is to get it to run on a new platform. --Per Abrahamsen 06:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Misleading keybindings?

The small list of keybindings states that M-w is copy and C-w is cut; while it's not wrong, it may be a bit misleading, since it's not the copy/cut that people commonly know (to clipboard), it just saves a region within the application...

In the operating system I use, copies and cuts from Emacs carry over to other applications.

--64.222.123.152 18:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah- Emacs uses the OS clipboard in my experiences. (But not always; for instance, in my Debian linux, there are two clipboards, one for when text is highlighted, and one for explicit copy and pastes- Emacs uses whichever is more recent.) --maru (talk) contribs 00:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Popularity

I think we should amend the introduction to state that GNU Emacs is currently the most popular version, and not merely as popular as xemacs. I've been around a fair bit on the Emacs IRC channels and the Emacs Wiki, in which most of the discussion is about GNU Emacs; and the Debian Project's Popularity Contest has GNU Emacs-related packages ranked higher[1] in popularity/installed base than the xemacs-related packages. --maru (talk) contribs 23:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Popularity' is arguable, regardless of user base. ;) I think it is best staying in its current state. ~LinuxeristFile:Tux-linux logo.svg E/L/T 02:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, maybe "popularity" is not a good word for this context - how can we ever judge if it is wrong? I looked into development activity and usage statistics, and found that XEmacs is behind on the latter, far behind on the former, and is increasingly losing ground. I put a fuller explanation on Talk:GNU Emacs. Gronky 10:59, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Merging in GNU Emacs

The Emacs article contains more information about GNU Emacs than the GNU Emacs article does. Also, the content of the GNU Emacs article is mostly duplicate information. GNU Emacs is the most widely used and most actively developed Emacs, so talking about it in the Emacs article is natural. The merge will be simple because the GNU Emacs article contains very little new information. For those same reasons, merging in GNU Emacs will not increase the size of the Emacs article much. (If this is a concern, then another path can be found, such as splitting elisp into a seperate article.) Gronky 15:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• Merge GNU Emacs into general Emacs article. Needs to respect the historical development of Emacs, though, and give appropriate weight to other Emacsim than GNU. Waitak 13:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)