Toward a "modern" Emacs [LWN.net]

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 27, 2020 12:35 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Toward a "modern" Emacs by pgdx
Parent article: Toward a "modern" Emacs

Here's a thing I did the other day that was quite easy in Emacs: open a CSV file, sort by second column, make into a latex table and generate a nicely typeset pdf. Bonus points if you can inspect that very pdf in your editor.

Wow. That's pretty cool. Maybe you can write an article which would explain how I, as complete novice who have never opened the manual and just wants to do that… can repeat that daring feat.

And if the answer is no, you can't, you need all the 600 pages of manual first… then that is where you have lost 90% of users. Now you are fighting for the remaining 10%… with VIM.

But that's just Emacs showing off, I guess…

Not Emacs, but you, I suspect. Yes, Emacs can do that and more… but only for someone who knows how to program. Which is not the majority of users our there. And no, I'm not talking about the need to write actual lisp code. That can be avoided, I suspect. But the need to understand how programs work in principle… these are unavoidable. And majority of text editor users… have no idea about that.

So before Emacs would decide what to do… it's developers have to decide if they want to try to pull more of that 10% users or they are audacious enough to fight for the remaining 90%. Strategy would depend on that…

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Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 27, 2020 14:18 UTC (Sun) by pgdx (guest, #119243) [Link] (8 responses)

It's three steps, so it's not like you need an engineering degree to
achieve it. Also, you don't need to read 600 manual pages if you are
willing to just use a search engine.

Open csv file in csv-mode, run C-c C-s (for alphabetic sort) or C-c C-n
(for numeric sort). If you haven't selected a region of the file
(typically the entire file or the entire file minus the header), Emacs
will select the entire file and ask you it you indeed want to sort the
entire file (including the first row). Then Emacs asks you which
column, and it defaults to the column your cursor is in (select 2).

Now, enter org-mode, select the table and run C-c |. (Sounds weird, but
pipe is column separator in org-mode, so it's quite natural if you're
familiar with org-mode.) If you want to make the first row the header
row, you simply press C-c -, which inserts a separator line under your
cursor.

Finally, run C-c C-e l p (again, possibly weird, but C-c C-e is
org-export, and then l p means LaTeX and PDF).

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 28, 2020 9:24 UTC (Mon) by beagnach (guest, #32987) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, it's simple, three steps, but the point is that a new user is never going to figure this out unaided.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 28, 2020 10:30 UTC (Mon) by pgdx (guest, #119243) [Link]

Yes, it's simple, three steps, but the point is that a new user is never going to figure this out unaided.

No, that's not the point. It's certainly a point, but it's not my point. My point was that the statement

Atom exists. VSCode exists. Both are superior editors to Emacs

isn't correct, at least not for me. I just tried to say that there are things I'd rather do in Emacs than attempt to achieve in either of the other two.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 28, 2020 23:26 UTC (Mon) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link] (5 responses)

> Open csv file in csv-mode

How to do that?

> Now, enter org-mode

Again, how to do that?

You're trying to explain how to do all this without reading 600 manual pages, right? If you're going to explain how to do something, make sure your entire audience (not just your expected audience) can get a clue, a feel for the task.

I'm writing this solely as someone with a glancing familiarity with Emacs.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 29, 2020 7:10 UTC (Tue) by pgdx (guest, #119243) [Link]

>> Open csv file in csv-mode
> How to do that?

M-x csv-mode (it defaults to that if you open a CSV file, though, so probably unnecessary).

>> Now, enter org-mode
> Again, how to do that?

M-x org-mode.

If you're not familiar with M-x, it is (usually) Alt-x and then you type in your command, e.g. help, apropos, whitespace-cleanup, org-mode, markdown-mode, csv-sort-fields, sort-lines, magit-blame, etc.... The set of available commands depends on your "current mode" (e.g. java, csv, org, markdown, text, mail, ...).

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 29, 2020 7:41 UTC (Tue) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (3 responses)

This is getting ridiculous. The task at hand obviously is not easily solvable by a "complete novice" of any tool, unless the tool is specifically coded for the task. It is definitely not solvable by the praised Emacs competitors like Atom and VS Code, without coding an extension in Typescript or some such. In Emacs the needed pieces are readily available, and if you don't feel like reading the manual you may be able to find someone who can whip up a semi-friendly front end that makes use of the existing Emacs csv-mode and org-mode packages.

You don't need to read 600 pages of manual to start using Emacs. You can start using it just like Windows Notepad (or a Notepad-like editor like VS Code): open a file by choosing Open File... in the File menu. Move around in the text using the arrow keys (or Ctrl-arrow for moving by word), the Page Up and Page Down keys, Home, End, Ctrl-Home, Ctrl-End. Edit the text using the Backspace and Delete keys; again, you can combine these keys with Ctrl to delete by word. Click on and select text using the mouse, if that's the way you want to work.

Unfortunately, for historical reasons, a few common Ctrl key combinations are different, so you will have to learn the Emacs alternatives for cut, copy, paste and undo (which, by the way, are also available for selection in the Edit menu). Oh well, I guess that's too much for the typical attention span of people today...

One more thing: the Real CUA key combinations for cut (Shift-Del), copy (Ctrl-Ins) and paste (Shift-Ins) are also available. Apple forced us to learn new key combinations for those functions.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 29, 2020 9:00 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> You can start using it just like Windows Notepad (or a Notepad-like editor like VS Code): open a file by choosing Open File... in the File menu.
I've actually tried this route back in 2006. And quickly discarded it. Back at that time I was already used to a "standard" layout: the project tree in the left and the tabbed editor on the right.

When you open a file in Emacs you get a full screen of it. There are no tabs and navigation between open files (who said "buffers"?) is NOT trivial. And it's a completely different model from everything else.

So basically you HAVE to start with reading the manual and un-learning all the muscle memory. CUA mode doesn't particularly help. As far as I remember, even text selection worked differently (not the usual shift+movement keys).

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 30, 2020 2:20 UTC (Wed) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (1 responses)

Omitting the Emacs/Unix-specific step of invoking LaTeX, Excel or just about any spreadsheet can do it just fine. Again, the old joke is "Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor". Why should I open a CSV file in a text editor and expect it to be treated like a spreadsheet?

> One more thing: the Real CUA key combinations for cut (Shift-Del), copy (Ctrl-Ins) and paste (Shift-Ins) are also available. Apple forced us to learn new key combinations for those functions.

Because the original ones were horrible? Maybe if any two keyboards kept Del and Ins in the same spot, I could learn to touch-type with them, but that would still require moving my right hand from the normal position.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 30, 2020 6:26 UTC (Wed) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

>Omitting the Emacs/Unix-specific step of invoking LaTeX, Excel or just about any spreadsheet can do it just fine. Again, the old joke is "Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor".

I really doubt a complete novice (not my words) could do it with Excel either. But the general expectation seems to be that if you are unable to do something in Excel, then "stop complaining and start learning". My objection was directed at commenter pgdx who complained that if a "complete novice" can't do this convoluted task without reading 600 pages of manual then "then that is where you have lost 90% of users." Isn't it a bit unfair to expect Emacs to enable someone who has always lived under a rock to be able to handle CSV files using it, without first learning the basics?

Another joke is that Emacs stands for "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping". Oh, the horror.

>Why should I open a CSV file in a text editor and expect it to be treated like a spreadsheet?

You don't have to, if you don't want to. I guess the example was just to demonstrate how powerful and extendible Emacs is. If you don't care about org-mode or csv-mode, then please ignore them. They don't bloat Emacs, other than taking up a bit of disk space.

>Because the original ones were horrible? Maybe if any two keyboards kept Del and Ins in the same spot, I could learn to touch-type with them, but that would still require moving my right hand from the normal position.

My comment on the CUA key bindings was written with tongue in cheek. My point was that key bindings have not been set in stone since the beginning of the IT era, and also that talking about Ctrl-x/c/v as "Common User Access Keys" is a misnomer.