On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 at 02:22 Tomasz Rola <rto...@ceti.pl> wrote: > Q1. I am becoming addicted to abusing Emacs (editor, but also host to > Elisp scripting language, which I am using to write more sophisticated > versions of some crude makeshift sh scripts from the past), but I have > read somewhere that MacOS port was not very good. Any comments on > this from Emacs users (if there are any)? >
I have been using the railwaycat port[1] from homebrew for a few years now. If you have been using released Emacs, you should be fine. Q2. On every screenshot showing MacOS desktop, there is menubar at the top > and icondock on the bottom. I do not like this. I have 20+'' of > display and I want all of this for myself. Is it possible to get rid > of menubar and dock, hopefully permamently, without loss of > functionality? No autohiding - I have tried this with Windows, KDE and > GNOME and it always ended with my mouse pointer coming too close to > the edge, triggering "autoshow", quaking windows and fussing with my > eyes. > Not that I am aware of. > Q2b. Is it possible to run alternative windows manager on MacOS - say, > Ratpoison or FVWM (preferably the latter, as I am slowly leaning to > the idea of writing my own modules for it)? > The only thing I've tried is amethyst[2] but it does feel very hacky in comparison to the built-in window manager. > Q3. I am moderate user of virtual desktops, right now set up in 4x4 > pattern, but there are days when I seriously consider going to 5x5 - > and right now I think heavy use starts somewhere around 8x8, maybe > 9x9. Also, after I (lamps in my brain) warm up I have about 60 windows > opened (all right, I have more, but 60 is a nice number while 50 is > too "made up"). Works very good, not problem with refreshing, no > crashes, excellent responsibility even with heavy computation (say, 3 > out of 4 cores busy full time and fourth at 40%) going on in a > background - but no swapping, as this would have killed performace, I > have enough RAM for buffers and ramdisk (yes really). I wonder how > would that be under MacOS - I mean, virtual desktops, ram disk, lots > of windows? > Haha. I remember thinking about the same thing when I first started using macOS. These are not things that are trivially[3] fixable. If you have an issue with performance, consider upgrading the processor or RAM. Having said all this there was a time when the MBP was the finest laptop to be had at its price point, I don't think the newer models are in the same league. There are other options now. Footnotes: [1] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS#toc14 [2] https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst [3] I use trivial fix in the sense that a google search and some fiddling results in a more or less permanent solution -- Alok
