5385005
story
Comments: 367 +- Technology: Emacs Hits Version 23 on Thursday July 30 2009, @02:29PM
Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday July 30 2009, @02:29PM
from the actually-includes-duke-nukem-forever dept.
from the actually-includes-duke-nukem-forever dept.
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicsoftware.gif); width:65px; height:65px;
software
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicgnu.gif); width:50px; height:76px;
gnu
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicprogramming.gif); width:80px; height:48px;
programming
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicit.gif); width:75px; height:61px;
it
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topictech2.gif); width:60px; height:80px;
technology
djcb writes "After only 2 years since the previous version, now emacs 23 (.1) is available. It brings many new features, of which the support for anti-aliased fonts on X may be the most visible. Also, there is support for starting emacs in the background, so you can pop up new emacs windows in the blink of an eye. There are many other bigger and smaller improvements, including support for D-Bus, Xembed, and viewing PDFs inside emacs. And not to forget, M-x butterfly. You can get emacs 23 from ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ or one of its mirrors; alternatively, there are binary packages available, for example from Ubuntu PPA."
Related Stories
leverage, n.:
Even if someone doesn't care what the world thinks
about them, they always hope their mother doesn't find out.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
it does. you can run Vim inside EMACS, you know ?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think they make blenders that Emacs could fit in.
Congrats! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks RMS for Emacs, the GPL and the spirit of GNU that I found in 1995 and has not left me since!
Happy Hacking!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is good news indeed
Thanx RMS for more than 20 years w the only editor
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Missed the best feature! (Score:5, Informative)
The summary misses the absolute best new feature: the separation of the client and server. I have a GUI Emacs running on my workstation, always. I sshed in a few days ago, wishing I could access one of its buffers. Voila! emacsclient -nw connected to the underlying server and gave me full access, in console mode, to the running Emacs. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:4, Funny)
I never thought I'd see the day that a text editor needed a network-aware client-server architecture.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:4, Interesting)
Emacs is not an IDE. That term is limited to one type of work (development), while Emacs is good for pretty much anything that involves working with text. "IDE" also conjures up images of endless busy toolbars and wizards and snapins and docked windows and proprietary file formats and non-standard tools everywhere you look, while Emacs provides a single interface (the buffer) and builds on standard tools and file formats.
I'd call Emacs an "operating environment". That covers its ability to provide a unified interface to most tasks, while acknowledging that it doesn't replace the operating system (Emacs is crippled without some flavour of GNU or UNIX behind it.)
Parent
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why someone modded this "Funny"! Well, actually, I do - because there's no tag for "Scary"
Brett
Parent
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Haw haw a text editor that duz stuff, we here around these parts just use NOTEPAD.EXE"
Yawn. Tired jokes that aren't funny anymore.
Text editing, text processing, and generally manipulating anything involving language---especially natural language---is the most complicated thing that's ever done on a computer. Yet people---even supposedly knowledgeable people---demand stupidly broken tools that lack sophisticated tools for doing a sophisticated thing. When you understand this, jokes about "ha ha your text-editor-operating-system does X" aren't funny. It makes you wonder why other text editors don't do things.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Haw haw a text editor that duz stuff, we here around these parts just use NOTEPAD.EXE"
Yawn. Tired jokes that aren't funny anymore.
Text editing, text processing, and generally manipulating anything involving language---especially natural language---is the most complicated thing that's ever done on a computer. Yet people---even supposedly knowledgeable people---demand stupidly broken tools that lack sophisticated tools for doing a sophisticated thing. When you understand this, jokes about "ha ha your text-editor-operating-system does X" aren't funny. It makes you wonder why other text editors don't do things.
"Perfection is achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
An application should do one thing and do it well, not do a gazillion things in a mediocre way*. Otherwise what's the point in running separate apps, why don't we just build all the functionality you'll ever need straight into the OS, it'd sure be faster that way.
*I'm not implying that emacs is mediocre just stating general principles.
But that's exactly the strength of Emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
An application should do one thing and do it well, not do a gazillion things in a mediocre way
That is exactly what Emacs is.
It's not one giant monolithic thing, at all.
Just like UNIX it's a core in which you can write very specific modules to address some aspect of editing. Perhaps it's formatting C style code. Perhaps it's a variant built around C++ or objective-C in particular. Perhaps it's a bit of logic to sort some parts of a file based on criteria in the file - or by running a shell command.
Each of these pieces can be tied to any particular file type, or called on at will. You can easily write your own, in elisp (basically a LISP variant). All of the standard behavior is also written in elisp, so you can modify or extend it as desired (most things have many points in which you can insert behavior hooks)
Never has a program more dearly held to the concepts you espouse, and it's actually the core of why I think people who prefer emacs over VI do so.
Parent
Re:But that's exactly the strength of Emacs (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also the point by Debian's vim maintainer, who switched to Emacs earlier this year [upsilon.cc]: that Emacs makes it very easy to interact with more specialized tools, such as ispell. Contrast with vim, which implemented its own spell checker. Now, let's see... which approach is more consistent with the Unix philosophy?
Parent
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:5, Funny)
Yup, you're an Emacs user alright.
Parent
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding. When I started using Linux, I used emacs because it was the more user-friendly editor that was mentioned in the manual (the other being vi). Then, for years, I used vi because it is ubiquitous and usually fast.
But now I'm back to emacs. What convinced me was M-x tetris. I figured if it could do _that_, it was powerful enough for my current and future editing needs. And it is. The secret is that the people who say that Emacs is more an operating system than a text editor are right. It's a Lisp environment where anything and everything can me modified while the system is running. It has a file manager, a client for your version control system, a web browser, a tetris game, a psychoanalyst, and countless other things.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot. There is a text editor, too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The relevance comes in phases.
The compile-from-source people had moved to emacs23 months ago.
Now it's available for the 3rd-party binary-repository people on nix.
Then it'll become a standard package.
Eventually, Aquamacs will move to v23 or do backporting, and the Mac (without darwine, &c.) people can have it. (Aquamacs is a beautiful app, and has at least some of the features implemented independently anyway)
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:5, Informative)
They also missed to mention the full unicode support, which is quite nice.
Anyway they could have linked to NEWS.23.1 [gnu.org], which has a concise list of new feature.
Parent
Re:Missed the best feature! (Score:4, Funny)
Awesome. The post above parent says
now all it needs is a feature that allows me to surf _pr0n_ from within emacs, and then i'd consider using it
and then I read
This is also called 'multitty'.
I was 10 Mb into the Ubuntu iso download before I read the whole post and realized what he was talking about.
Parent
Terrorist post. (Score:5, Funny)
A lone geek runs into the middle of the forum, screaming "vi forever! Praise the hex codes!" *boom* :)
Remember this one? (Score:5, Funny)
Slightly shortened to accommodate the special event:
I asked my email-pal: "UNIX or Windoze?". He replied "UNIX". I said "Ah...me too!".
I asked my email-pal: "Linux or AIX?". He said "Linux, of course". I said "Me too".
I asked him: "Emacs or vi". He replied "Emacs". I said "Me too. Small world."
I asked him: "GNU Emacs or XEmacs?", and he said "GNU Emacs". I said "oh, me too."
I asked him, "GNU Emacs 22 or GNU Emacs 23?", and he replied "GNU Emacs 22". I said "DIE YOU OBSOLETE NO-GOOD SOCIALLY MALADJUSTED CELIBATE COMMIE FASCIST DORK!", and never emailed him again.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Either one is better than using 99% of the other options out there. If your text editor requires the use of a mouse you need a better text editor.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you can do a find and replace based on a regex via the mouse? I would love to see that. Which mouse button changes the case on a whole line of text?
I use vim not because it makes me "leet", but because it is by far the best tool for the job that I have found. It can be used in all places, it runs on everything and I don't need to worry if X is even installed. It does have a steep learning curve, but so do all professional tools in darn near every field.
Still useful after all these years... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't use Emacs as my primary editor anymore, but I do turn to it pretty often still.
For short repetitive tasks, there's simply nothing more useful than the macro recording mode that lets you execute a combination of searches, multiple buffer stores, and cursor position storage states to easily repeat very complex tasks over a block of code.
For reading in obscure file formats, Emacs usually has an answer - with good syntax highlighting.
I look forward to this next iteration of emacs and what else it can do...
Re:Still useful after all these years... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh I totally agree. For example, just today I was writing a program that needs to load in around 1000 sequentially-numbered images. Like any decent coder, I had typed all of the filenames into my main program loop. But then my manager called me up to let me know that the base filename of the images had changed! You can just imagine the sinking feeling I had in my stomach, knowing that I would need to retype every single filename! It would have taken me hours, if not for the macro recording functionality in Emacs. Thanks, Emacs.
It doesn't stop there, of course. I needed a function to count how many images had been loaded in, and save that number as a string. Then my boss phones me to say that they don't want image #0003 any more. Think of all the 'if/then' statements I'd have been forced to rewrite by hand, if it wasn't for Emacs!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The syntax highlighting is good because it understands all kinds of different content types in different languages.
If your only problem is the default colors, that's a very easy fix: Every color in every highlighting scheme is editable. If you don't like the default, switch the scheme to zenburn or something
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, average people who just want to edit some text now and then find the very concept of putting your own personal text editor's configuration files in a version control system to be very...how shall I say it..not quite how average people think.
Putting source code or collaborative project in into a version control system...smart.
Putting your text editors configuration files that one usually sets and forgets into version control.....not quite sane.
For some reason I am reminded ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I seriously doubt Alan Cox is going to upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
I seriously doubt Alan Cox is going to upgrade
I've been running emacs 23 for 2 years ... sorta (Score:4, Interesting)
M-x version gives me "GNU Emacs 23.0.0.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.10.6) of 2007-01-18". This is a version I checked out from emacs CVS on that date, compiled with GTK support and antialiasing (at least one, possibly both of which were experimental at the time) and have been using this version ever since. I've been sticking to it because of the antialiasing, basically. Whenever I start it up it displays a warning about how it might be horribly unstable, eat my data, etc.
But I have found it to be remarkably stable - much more so than many / most final releases of software. I can probably count the crashes I've had from it on my fingers - in unary, not binary, for the benefit of any pedants out there. If the final release is at least as good as the random CVS checkout I have then it ought to be pretty good! To be fair it sounds like lots of features have been added since my checkout ...
On the basis of my experience I will consider testing CVS versions of emacs in future if they have useful features that I need. Obviously still gotta take care with that vital data when doing so, my good experiences notwithstanding!
On a side note, the emacs versioning system is amusing in itself ... IIRC they were numbering the releases 0.x and working up to 1.0 as normal. But it took so many releases that they ended up just dropping the "0." designation and calling it "x" instead. Which is why emacs is at version 23 where vim (on my machine) is only at 7.2 and nano at 2.0.9 ;-)
Word wrapping (Score:3, Interesting)
How about adding word wrapping when displaying? My local emacs expert wasn't even able to do that, but MS Notepad can do it. It's really useful for editing latex documents where your want a paragraph on a single line (that makes it much easier to search for phrases).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
M-x auto-fill-mode
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
C-h f visual-line-mode
----
visual-line-mode is an interactive compiled Lisp function in
`simple.el'.
(visual-line-mode &optional arg)
Redefine simple editing commands to act on visual lines, not logical lines.
This also turns on `word-wrap' in the buffer.
It is even right there on the menu (Options->Line Wrapping...->Word Wrap).
Re:Word wrapping (Score:5, Informative)
1. M-x visual-line-mode RET (or Options->Line Wrapping->Word Wrap)
2. Live happily ever after.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One question (Score:3, Funny)
Does the feature list include "Shortcuts that make sense to humans who never used the 30-year old keyboards that were around when RMS was hacking on TEX"?
Until I stop seeing Emacs primers that start with advice to start remapping my keyboard, I'll pass.
Emacs? Bah! (Score:4, Funny)
Emacs is merely a TECO macro.
Given enough random characters and memory space, TECO can simulate the human brain.
--
BMO
Re:Decent text editor still not included right? (Score:5, Insightful)
emacs is what happens when a project goes too far beyond its intended purpose.
It's a frikken text editor for God's sake. If it's not a text editor any longer, and is now the beginning of its own OS, then let it be identified as such. I mean my god, the extensions this thing can have? Calendar/Planners? I like advanced text editing functions as much as the next guy... maybe some useful macros here and there... but this is just ridiculous. How long will it be before Microsoft starts seeing emacs as a threat to Windows + Office?
Parent
Re:Decent text editor still not included right? (Score:5, Funny)
emacs is what happens when a project goes too far beyond its intended purpose.
Why do you feel that emacs is what happens when a project goes too far beyond its intended purpose?
Parent
Re:Decent text editor still not included right? (Score:4, Funny)
Because it includes an "Eliza style bot" that acts like a Rogerian therapist, that's why.
Parent
Re:Decent text editor still not included right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct: Emacs is a text editor. And guess what: a calendar consists of text. Plans consist of text. So are emails and newsgroup contents. Source code, XML data files, patches, changelogs, directory listings, version control messages, compilation messages, are all text.
Parent
Re:Decent text editor still not included right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it might. For instance, Emacs 23 includes support for SVG, and SVG code consists of human-readable text. So if you need to change some parameters in an SVG image, such as its width or height, you can open it in Emacs, type C-c C-c to switch to text representation, perform your edits, and type C-c C-c again to instantly view the result.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
feature creep
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary
Jump to: navigation, search
English
Noun
Singular
feature creep
Plural
uncountable
feature creep (uncountable)
1. The tendency of a design project or product cycle to accumulate more and more features or details, rather than to be completed and released at a more basic level.
Examples: Emacs
[edit] Synonyms
* creeping elegance
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now finish HURD please (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
M-x butterfly
Knowing emacs, to actually issue that command, you would have to press all those buttons at once.
Never following M-x; that let's you just type in the command name. (M-: is even better; lets you type raw elisp...)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Bloatware == slowness" is a misguided generalization.
Emacs actually is the classic example of bloatware. It doesn't matter that the bloat is fast. What matters is that when you try to change an option you discover that you have 5-10 micro-options + hooks + extra bunch of options for different modes you might happen to use. And none of their combination leads to desired result. Then you turn to lisp - hopping to tap into the programmability of Emacs - just to discover that every tiny thing has already l
Re:Eight megs and constantly swapping (Score:4, Funny)
at least in VIM, random typing can accidentally put you in a useful mode.
Emacs starts in some sort of.... okay, I typed "useless scratchpad thing" here, then went to see if anything had changed since last I tried it. What fun! Here goes "Attempt #4 at actually using emacs"
$ sudo apt-get install emacs22
$ emacs
Oh look, I'm in a GUI this time. Hm, I expected to get a useless scratchpad thing, but it looks like instead I'm in some sort of crudely-made slapped together temporary menu that they'll replace with something more sensible in the final version.
Oh well, there's a standard "new file" button in the corner, I'll click that.
Alright, now the bottom of the window says "Find file: ~/"... okay, I guess that wasn't it, I'll try through the menu instead.
File... "Visit new file"? Are you serious? Okay, fine, they're hippies, whatever.. I'll just click it.
oh, "find file" again.. I don't want to find a file, I want a new file.
Yeah, I get it, I'll stop playing dumb now. It's using 1970s technology or something so it needs a filename before it can edit anything. "emacs foo" opens as expected, lets me type normally and clicking the save button saves.
Now how do I use the console? /console /terminal
man emacs
nope..
nope..
I'll force it:
DISPLAY= emacs
press C-h for help.. and C-h actually works this time! Though only once.. better than last time though. May actually be usable, I'll give it credit.
Emacs works better than it did last time I tried it. Still looks like crap, but it seems to be working, for the most part.
Parent