Re: Some developement questions

[Ergus]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2018 at 05:21:40PM +0200, hw wrote:
> Ergus <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > On Sun, Sep 02, 2018 at 05:07:00PM +0200, hw wrote:
> > > Joshua Branson <address@hidden> writes:
> > >
> > > > > Who would ever press ESC-right or ESC-left to move a word?
> > > >
> > > > part of this reason is why I started to use evil-mode.  :)
> > >
> > > Right, I thought about doing that since starting to learn vim and
> > > understanding how it can be much more efficient than Emacs.
> >
> > That's relative and very subjective. Modal editing makes not too much
> > sense for me in 2018.
>
> Last night I tried to do some programming with vim, and it was an
> interesting experience.  I'm not so sure anymore if it can be much more
> efficient than Emacs, provided that you use either 100% the way they're
> supposed to be used.  They're probably bascially the same.
Yes, more or less I agree.
> But how else than modal would you edit?  The difference between vim and
> Emacs is that Emacs` normal mode is vims insert mode, and Emacs can have
> a whole mode hiding behind every key you press rather than only one
> "command mode" which limits you to the keys you have available and to
> stringing them up.
I my brain at least a text editor should edit and insert a letter if I
press it, and extra things require extra commands. The real issue for me
is that I can only use the terminal and many keybinds are not available
(C-backspace or S-C-backspace for example). That's the reason I have
considered to use evil mode sometimes.

> After all, I'll stick with Emacs.  Vim doesn't seem to have any real
> advantages for me, and there are some things I'd be missing.
>
> > It was a solution in a moment but and according to the vi creator "it
> > was for a world that doesn't exist anymore".
>
> That something is for a world that doesn't exist anymore can be said for
> a lot of things.  That doesn't mean that what replaces it is any better,
> and indeed the replacements are usually much worse.
I agree, that's why we still use emacs :) (or vim). But I find the
justification that vim users should move with hjkl (and so on) because it
is faster and better because the fingers don't move... so senseless. Is just my 
feeling.

But sometimes I understand them when I have to type C-a C-SPC C-e M-w to
select a line because xterm doesn't send C-backspace to emacs.

> > > Is it
> > > exactly the same as using vim?
> > It depends of your use cases. But for just editing, yes, it is pretty much
> > the same. Vim users use to complain that evil mode is slower but it is
> > more a psychological thing; I have tried to measure what they complain
> > about and if it is, should be in the order of micro seconds.
>
> Someone must have put a lot of work into it.
>
> > > Why not use vim instead?  Does Emacs have advantages over vim when using
> > > evil-mode?
> >
> > Again. It depends of your use cases. To edit simple files there is not
> > real difference, no advantage or disadvantage as editing is the basic
> > functionality.
>
> Well, that could be said for all editors.

Exactly. Emacs is not just an editor, but as a simple editor even nano
is good enough (except for the undo lacking but our redo is not as good
as it can be without undo-tree, this is one of the default things I
would really like to change, the default undo behavior).
> > But if you do serious programming in big projects, edit remote files
> > in multiple servers cross coping between them, you want to use irony
> > or rtagsor for C++, gtags for cross referencing, gdb inside the same
> > editor, manage cmake projects in the projectile way or simply handle
> > git with magit; or if you plan to customize details for your specific
> > files or systems... it is very hard in vim some of these are
> > impossible.
>
> That seems to go along with my impression that Emacs has some
> fundamental features that have allowed it to become far more
> sophisticated than vim.  To begin with, vim is painfully lacking the
> concept of buffers Emacs has always had.
>
> > > Vim even does syntax highlighting for fvwm out of the box.
> > have you tried config-mode, is a bit generic, but I use i3wm and it works for 
> > me?
>
> Maybe that is what vim is using.
>
> > > I managed to find an fvwm-mode for emacs (which needs some work) years
> > > ago, but why isn't that shipped with Emacs by default?
> > I thing because the intersection of the groups of people who use fvwm
> > and emacs is close to zero
>
> Why wouldn't people using Emacs not also use fvwm?  I'd say particularly
> those using fvwm would be using Emacs, and the other way round.
>
> Besides, why would anyone use anything else than fvwm?
JA JA, I didn't even know that fvwm existed, I will give a try :p but I prefer 
tilling wm.

> > and the package is kind of unmaintained. But you are very welcome to
> > adopt and collaborate with that :)
>
> Yeah I'm thinking about doing that.  It must be rather old because it
> doesn't seem to recognize quite a few of the keywords.
>
> Hm, the version I have is 8 years old, and it says it's under GPL.  Do
> you know anything about it?  I only remember I found it somewhere, and
> it could be painfully slow sometimes.
>
> ,----
> | ;; $Id: fvwm-mode.el 232 2010-10-29 16:48:05Z dragon $
> | ;;
> | ;; Release 1.6.2
> | ;;
> | ;; Copyright (C) 2005-2009 Bert Geens <address@hidden>
> `----
>
> Well, i could ask him :)  Or perhaps there is an entirely different
> mode?
>
> > > (Uh, we probably shouldn't discuss this there --- feel free to send me
> > > an email directly :)
> > Why not?
>
> This is a development mailing list, and I wouldn't want to start an
> editor war.
The editor war finished a long time ago and in spite nobody won then,
now Emacs is sadly loosing the postwar stage in my opinion. That's a long 
discussion to have.

Best,
Esgus