Re: Emacs and Octave

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 13/07/07, mccoct <address@hidden> wrote:

> OK, so it seems that emacs is a lot more complicated than I expected. So what
> do most octave users use for editing files?

This is a religious question:

    http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/R/religious-issues.html

I personally am a follower of St iGNUcius

    http://www.stallman.org/saint.html
    http://www.stallman.org/saintignucius.jpg

and the Church of Emacs:

    http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/religion/

In particular, I use nothing but the One True Editor to edit my Octave
files too.

> Is emacs worth putting a lot of time into?

Yes!

Well, ok, maybe. Like I said, it's a religious issue. But unlike the
situation with other religions, I think I can partially rationally
justify why I follow this one.

A bit of anecdotal experience: I was first introduced to Emacs because
I asked someone to teach me to edit LaTeX files, and they taught me
how to use Emacs. I *hated* Emacs. Hated it with deep, flaming,
*passion*. Why did I have to learn all this antiquated terminology of
"buffers", "point", "faces", "modes" and whatnot just to get my
mathematical documents written? What's up with these nonsensical and
overly long key commands for basic tasks like MOVING THE BLASTED
CURSOR? Why ctrl-b instead of the left arrow? What the hell is going
on here?

But despite my complaints, I believed I had no choice but to use Emacs
to get my LaTeXXing done, so I perservered. Now I never feel
comfortable editting any kind of text or code if I'm not using Emacs.

Emacs is a one-stop editor for absolutely *everything*. As an editor,
it does C++ code, Octave code, LaTeX, and every imaginable coding
language known to geekkind. It has an IRC client and web client. It
has a code browser. It has an extensive community of coders who
continually contribute to its betterment [1]. It slices, it dices, it
even plays Pong (try it! M-x pong).

Of course, I'm partially joking. I don't use it for the Pong, but
rather for its editting abilities. The style of editting with Emacs is
different than what you use anywhere. If you're a capable typist
(i.e. it wouldn't even occur to you to look down at the keyboard while
you type), then you need to give your muscle memory a chance to learn
the Emacs keychords. Your cerebellum is smarter than your
cerebrum. True followers of the Church of Emacs know that moving your
hands away from the homerow keys while editting disrupts immersion
into Deep Hack Mode:

    http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hack-mode.html

Oh, and yes. Even when I was still dependent on Matlab I used Emacs:

    http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/~kas/software/emacs/

Emacs is an investment of your time and muscle memory, but it's well
worth it. Start working through its tutorial. Join our siblinghood,
oh, troubled soul.

Sincerely GNUours,
- Jordi G. H.

(This email written in Emacs, of course. In mail mode, M-x mail-mode.)

[1] http://www.emacswiki.org/