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Software GNU is Not Unix Open Source Unix

Emacs and Vim Combined In New 'Spacemacs' Distro (spacemacs.org) 130

Posted by EditorDavid from the bastard-offspring dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino brings news of a new text editor offering what he calls "a modern, hipster-compliant makeover" of both Emacs and Vim: As a classic, perhaps the classic GNU project, Emacs has been marred by abysmal branding and marketing...that has improved slightly but might still leave some people unsatisfied [and] has also been engulfed in an eternal war with Vim, the editor of the beast. Mope no further, salvation is nigh! Spacemacs is a new Emacs distribution that aims to combine all the goodies of Emacs and Vim and then some...
Version .2 of Spacemacs was released this week "with more than 1700 commits since the last major version released in January 2016." With nearly 500 contributors on GItHub, Spacemacs plans to be "crowd-configured" with "curated packages tuned by power users," and is offering features like a real-time display of available key bindings, a simple query system for layers and packages, and of course, a clearly defined set of conventions.
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Emacs and Vim Combined In New 'Spacemacs' Distro More

Emacs and Vim Combined In New 'Spacemacs' Distro

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  • Oh come on... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by willoughby ( 1367773 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @08:39PM (#53039665)

    This is a joke, right? :wq
    dammit

  • What's next? Human sacrifice? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Dogs and cats living together?

  • Jesus wept.

    • Re: Hipster compliant? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      More like he kicked over their table, cast their project out of the cathedral, and banished them to the bazaar. Jesus was like the original hippie, man, but with a nasty temper he inherited from his dad.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Theovon ( 109752 )

        Actually, the funny thing is that all these Christians say they want to be more Christ-like, but they’re nothing like Jesus. Yeshu (his real name as well as I can render it in latin script) was a counter-culturalist, hippy, ass-kicker. He mercilessly picked on the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders for being overly legalistic, and both he and the writings of others in the new testament were filled with subtle to blatant fuck-you the conformism of the Romans. It’s amazing how much like the Pha

        • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

          by VanGarrett ( 1269030 )

          Jesus' real name, if you wanted to translate it by the same rules as has been done with other people who had that name in the Bible, is Joshua.

          The trouble is that Jesus' message is largely misunderstood. People get tied up in obedience and the Hell-and-Damnation, self-righteous preaching style of modern evangelists. They tend to think that this is what Christianity is about, and you're most certainly right-- if Christ were to walk among us today in the way that he walked among the Romans, he'd be flipping t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

            Jesus' real name, if you wanted to translate it by the same rules as has been done with other people who had that name in the Bible, is Joshua.

            That is one hundred percent false. The GP has it right. You're just an ignorant idiot who can't see the difference between Yeshu and Yehoshua.

            • I had always assumed that "Jesus" was a Latinized version of "Jesse" ("Yishai" in Hebrew). That certainly would have added to the idea that he was a descendant of David (Jesse was David's father).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              You're just an ignorant idiot

              That tone is not appreciated, especially when the names are presumably variant spellings of the same name. I'd prefer that you back up your assertion with etymology rather than with name-calling, and I imagine others reading this would agree.

          • In fact, I have a real problem with the whole "sacrificing your children" motif of the Bible, whether it is Abraham sacrificing his son, Lot offering his pubescent daughters to a horny mob or God sacrificing his son. It all seems to be pointing humanity to a self-destructive, counter-survival path. Sort of a throwback to the worship of Moloch.

        • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

          by argumentsockpuppet ( 4374943 )

          I'll bite.

          Peter had a tendency to use bad language. He let his temper flare when it did no good. When confronted with a test of his faith, he buckled. I can see myself in his failures. Thomas saw people fed when it was impossible, saw people healed and knew Jesus. Yet when told that Jesus was alive, refused to accept the possibility of another miracle. He went so far as to say he would never believe unless he could touch the pierced flesh of Jesus himself. If there's anyone I see myself in, it's not Jesus,

        • Many Christians are.
          There is just a loud subset who are just regressive.

  • Amazing! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You managed to rile both vim and emacs users!

    Just going through the documentation makes my blood boil. "Who needs vimscript anyway?"

    Fuck you!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      You managed to rile both vim and emacs users!

      Thank goodness I'm a vi user, then. One of the first things I do on systems is getting a real vi instead of vim.

      • vim's compatibility mode with vi is pretty good. Honestly it sounds a bit pretentious.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arth1 ( 260657 )

          vim's compatibility mode with vi is pretty good. Honestly it sounds a bit pretentious.

          One problem is that it has all the bells and whistles by default, and you need to turn them off, through a bunch of vimrc statements that are way too non-intuitive for a human to remember them.
          Another big one is lack of default file locking. I want to be sure that someone else (which might include me in a different window) won't be editing the same file.
          And I have "uu" in motor memory - it undoes the last change then undoes the undo, so you get a visual diff of the last change. With vim, it causes two und

          • One problem is that it has all the bells and whistles by default, and you need to turn them off, through a bunch of vimrc statements that are way too non-intuitive for a human to remember them. :set compatible

            But the biggest problems is the dependency chain - it polls in everything except the kitchen sink, and installing it on an embedded system is difficult at best.

            Sure that's a reason to not install it, but not really a reason to remove it from a system you administer.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by arth1 ( 260657 )

              Sure that's a reason to not install it, but not really a reason to remove it from a system you administer.

              I don't, but I make sure that vi points to a non-vim variety. People can still type "vim", or set their own alias.

              (And any jr admin that edits shared/system files and chooses to use a non-locking editor like vim or nano or whatever better work on copies, lest they be smacked with a rubber chicken.)

    • Just going through the documentation makes my blood boil. "Who needs vimscript anyway?"

      To be fair, Emacs LISP *is* an actual full-blown LISP system, not a (simple) scripting or macro language.

  • Common distro editor or fail into oblivion (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'd love an alternative to vi that would be bundled with every unix/linux variant so I'd not have to teach every new hire the intricacies of "vi" and the limitations of it. Truth be told I always tell them they can pick their editor that supports their operating system... but vi works without adding a package to a *nix* distribution.

    Peace out.

    • nano is in the common Linux distributions that I've used. It's good for basic text editing, and the keyboard commands aren't as arcane as vi or emacs (and the most common ones are shown at the bottom of the screen).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Yes, both RPM and deb distributions of Linux that I've used come with GNU nano.

        And if you're on a *BSD, it probably comes with Pico, the Alpine Composer. It feels like nano because nano was a functional clone of Pico back before Pico was free software.

  • done years ago (Score:3)

    by rubycodez ( 864176 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @09:22PM (#53039837)

    there's been vi package for emacs, and emacs emulation for vim....whoop de doo.

  • Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.

  • I don't need to think about what to do, my brain produces input and my fingers make it happen. Later on I can let my brain proofread, but my fingers still do what I want without me thinking about how to do it.

    I never got to that point with emacs.

    • My fingers do vim automatically too, sometimes when I don't even want them to. :wq

      • My fingers do vim automatically too, sometimes when I don't even want them to. :wq

        Yes, and your girl friend says: knock it off.

        Also note that Emacs key bindings can help with your dexterity :-)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          They can also send you off to medical care . . .

          After a few long days editing on a full sized CKIE (control key in exile) keyboard, I found myself at the campus quack. Muscle strain in my pinkie, it turned out, from rotating much of my (large) hand and reaching that control key in the far corner . . .

          By some strange coincidence, the janitors must have drooped my keyboard that day, as a little piece magically appeared next to it that sure looked like a physical toggle for the capslock key (surely *I* would

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kybred ( 795293 )

        Yes, sometimes I'll find :wq in a Word document that I've been editing. Or hit when I'm typing an email in Outlook.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kybred ( 795293 )

          Yes, sometimes I'll find :wq in a Word document that I've been editing. Or hit when I'm typing an email in Outlook.

          That should say '... hit ESC when I'm typing ...'

      • My fingers do vim automatically too, sometimes when I don't even want them to. :wq

        Yeah.[esc]

        When I bought my firsrt unix machine, back in the '70s, it had memory expansion - two whole megabytes of RAM total - but no demand-paged virtual memory. I had to use vi because emacs was too big for it to compile, let alone run

        (Joke at the time was the name was an acronym for Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping. My now-wife was in college about then, and her prof read mail in emacs - on his highly-privileged ac

  • a modern, hipster-compliant makeover

    Please, let's not even hint that "hipster-compliant" is a valid or desirable standard.

  • Were the Clinton versus Trump comment threads too tame?

  • We have to do something now that XEmacs is basically dead and gone.

    Like improving text mode operations on screens wider than 100 characters, for one.

  • Oblig: Ed man! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dogvomit ( 979755 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @10:30PM (#53040113)

    Ed, man! !man ed.

    “Ed is the standard text editor [gnu.org].”

    --
    Happy happy oh my friend

  • Why don't you just ditch vim or ditch emacs and watch the video that will tell you what you don't know! Let actress Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan and the whole 30Rock crew show you how to pronounce Dr Leo Spaceman's name.

    90% after watching the video, will BEGIN TO GUESS how spacemacs is pronounced. The other 5% will guess correctly. 5% will just fire up their ridiculous GUI editor like Gedit or Kwrite to try and steer clear of a religious war, but you know what is happening in the Middle East is not over, becau

  • Wow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jwymanm ( 627857 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @11:05PM (#53040281) Homepage
    All these posts and not a single positive? I've been using Spacemacs for several months now and its the best thing since sliced bread. It's got amazing defaults and great layering support. Everything is handled inside one .spacemacs file inside your home directory so you can just copy that around and get the same exact experience. I use holy mode which is just emacs bindings in the forefront. It's a great project and it continues to get better.. nothing negative and not at all useless like some very nice spammers here posted.

    • All these posts and not a single positive? I've been using Spacemacs for several months now and its the best thing since sliced bread. It's got amazing defaults and great layering support. Everything is handled inside one .spacemacs file inside your home directory so you can just copy that around and get the same exact experience. I use holy mode which is just emacs bindings in the forefront. It's a great project and it continues to get better.. nothing negative and not at all useless like some very nice spammers here posted.

      Congratulation. You discovered you like Emacs (or XEmacs).

    • It really is a great piece of work.

  • From the Spacemacs documentation page: [spacemacs.org]

    4 Who can benefit from this?

    Spacemacs was initially intended to be used by Vim users who want to go to the next level by using Emacs (see guide for Vimmers).

    Also, Emacs can *already* emulate Vi and Vim so... what's the point again?

    Remember: Programmers don't let other programmers co-opt editors while drunk...
    [ The More You Know [wikipedia.org] ]

    • so... what's the point again?

      But but ... Evil ain't hip.

      ugh ... what's up these days with the mentality that everything that has been around for a few years is ol' fashioned and needs to be replaced and re-innovated?

      I am sick and tired of that mentality.

      • I'm sick and tired of the mentality that criticizes stuff while being completely ignorant (and wrong) about what it is.
      • Huh? Spacemacs uses Evil. It's not re-innovating or replacing anything. As far as I'm concerned it installs a whole bunch of default configurations, packages, etc. while making configuration very simple. The alternative of creating your own Emacs configuration could take several weeks before you get to the point of productivity as most of people's previous VIM configs. For spacemacs the process is much faster.
    • If you read more of the documentation, you could have answered your own question. Spacemacs is a akin to Emacs Prelude, Emacs Live, or Emacs Starter Kit... its a *very well* polished, well tuned, and even user-friendly, evil-mode/helm-mode based emacs setup, along with a lot of other goodies baked - including lots of great work making other packages in the emacs ecosystem work more smoothly with evil. If you use either emacs or vim, its worth your while to check it out.

      • I've used Emacs for 25+ years, pretty sure I'm fine with it as-is. But thanks anyway.

        • Well since you are fine with it as-is, therefore it is is fine for everyone as-is. Or perhaps, if you use emacs as-is for 25+ years, you have 25+ years of ingrained bad habits.

  • Distro??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MadMaverick9 ( 1470565 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @11:27PM (#53040369)

    It's just a fucking ordinary Emacs add-on.

    Typical hipster marketing talk.

    • It's just a fucking ordinary Emacs add-on.

      Typical hipster marketing talk.

      Emacs was hipster before we ever started using that word. And it's pronounced Vee-Eye, not Vie. Off lawn get.

    • Darn. And I was ready to make a joke that emacs users are finally admitting that it's really a full operating system that doesn't include a decent text editor.
    • I think distro is an accurate label. You simply can't "add" spacemacs onto emacs, it completely remodels how emacs, configuration and package-managing works. In fact, when you install spacemacs, it wipes out everything in the .emacs.d directory and installs its own packages, default configurations, etc. If that isn't a distro I don't know what is.
    • A collection of software aka plugins is indeed called a distribution...

  • Does it support Parrot?

  • what is vi bringing to the party (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you add vi to emacs, the result is emacs.

  • The entire concept of a having to push extra keys to simply edit text is flawed.

    Modeless design won a long time ago in software...not including of course the whole Windows/Drop Down Menus thing, also modeless design.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The entire concept of a having to push extra keys to simply edit text is flawed.

      Richard Stallman has RSI. Ben Wing has RSI. RSI is sort of the standard story of many (X)Emacs project leaders and power users. And it's not the mouse that is to blame but rather key chording, particularly with the control key, as a result of having to push extra keys simultanously with normal keys, thanks to the modeless design of Emacs.

      Yes, modeless design won a long time ago in software, but that's because heavy coding is not the normal use case for computers.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The entire concept of a having to push extra keys to simply edit text is flawed.

        Richard Stallman has RSI. Ben Wing has RSI. RSI is sort of the standard story of many (X)Emacs project leaders and power users. And it's not the mouse that is to blame but rather key chording, particularly with the control key, as a result of having to push extra keys simultanously with normal keys, thanks to the modeless design of Emacs.

        Yes, modeless design won a long time ago in software, but that's because heavy coding is not the normal use case for computers.

        I don't think "Toe Cheese" Stallman's RSI is due to just key chording. He needs to learn about using soap, razors then fix his personality, that would probably go a long way to treating his RSI.

    • .not including of course the whole Windows/Drop Down Menus thing, also modeless design.

      . Agree with your first point, but it is nice to have a text mode editor. Sometimes you want to ssh into a system.

      That said, I do prefer pretty much everything to vi. It takes too long to learn to even simply type in it. I guess it's good for people who do everything over the network but on the whole I prefer even the MSDOS edit application.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        If you like MS-DOS Editor, you may also like GNU nano or Pico, which is a text editor for UNIX systems at a similar level of abstraction.

        • Pico and nano are fine. The help bar at the bottom is a useful feature for those

          My point wasn't that these are particularly brilliant. More that they're simple to pick up. It would be nice to have a little more functionality but for just modifying a few lines in a config file (which is all many of us want to do via ssh) they're more than adequate!

  • Emacs and Vim live together in perfect harmony
    Side by side on my keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?

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