> Some might claim emacs violates this principle but I don't really think > so. emacs is an extensible text editor with some basic windowing > capabilities etc. but that's all it can do unless you want to load up > thousands of lines of elisp code but even that is done in a way in > keeping with the unix philosophy IMHO. elisp plugins to extend the > functionality have turned out to be a great way to do things even though > some people have gone overboard and done silly things like email > programs and towers of hanoi and eliza etc. but each of these things are > really just their own separate programs talking to the emacs program for > output display via standard interfaces through the elisp interpreter.
Emacs has lots of kruft and complexity due to its age. If you like elisp plugins then maybe you will like Eclipse plugins. I just downloaded Eclipse plugins for Python and Subversion support. > How long have emacs and vim been around? Why do you think they have been > around that long? Because they are good, that's why. Many other IDE's > have come and gone but I don't know anyone still using the same > proprietary IDE they used 10 years ago. Since Eclipse is FOSS it might > have longer legs. DOS has been around for years too. :) > > Is it so cool I should give up on Emacs? > > Just out of curiosity, how familiar are you with emacs? I have just > recently started using emacs for my coding tasks (when I can break the > habit of automatically typing vi to start an editor, that is) and I am > still very much a newbie. I have had some emacs books on my bookshelf > for ages but only recently started to dive into them but with so much > other stuff on my plate it has been slow going. I've been a vi stalwart > for years and always been interested in emacs but just never got around > to learning it. But I really like the idea of an extensible editor. Do > you remap your caps-lock key? It seems to be a requirement to using > emacs without going insane. I feel your pain. I had to make vi a soft link to emacs for a year because my brain was hardwired to always type vi! I remapped *everything*! Instead of learning Emacs I basically changed Emacs to be what I wanted it to be. I've done lots of customization. You can email for help anytime. No problem. Chris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
