> I was just using emacs as ordinary text editor For me, an ordinary text editor is one that includes a good macro facility, and I write new macros at the drop of a hat. If and when I learn emacs, learning LISP will be part and parcel of that.
"Emacs is a great operating system that desperately needs a text editor" -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Tomasz Rola [rto...@ceti.com.pl] Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2023 2:07 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Has anyone On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 02:57:55PM +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote: > > But I'll counter with, why should people need to learn -- what I'll > > politely call -- a non-intuitive editor to do occasional simple edits > > of text files? > > Understood, but vi and emacs are still on my list of software to learn. I found emacs to be quite easy to learn. One just starts it and needs to actually read what the thing is saying (one of the most fruitful half hours ever was, for me, reading emacs tutorial, about 29 years ago). However, bear in mind, if you start using emacs, sooner or later you will learn at least a bit of Emacs Lisp (Elisp). If nothing else, customising (writing one's own .emacs file) is done in Elisp. No worry though, they have a manual for the language, and when I was learning this and that Lisp, their manual was quite nice to have for clarification on various subjects. Actually, I did quite a lot of customising by finding interesting pieces in other people's .emacs files and shamelessly copying. But one can also customise it using built in system for it - without even knowing there is any Lisp involved (menu Options / Customise Emacs is that, I think). Still, there is plenty of Lisp beneath for those who want to look at it. But for many years before doing my own dot-emacs, I was just using emacs as ordinary text editor, file browser, manpage reader, source code viewer etc. Also, web browser. Just pay attention and do not do all this in a single emacs process, just in case. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
