
Vi and Vim vs. Emacs Shootout and Deal - rbanffy
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/pq/271
======
intranation
The Emacs book was written in 2004 and is about Emacs 21.3. Current Emacs is
23.3, with 24.0 in pre-test.

I know things are relatively stable in Emacs world, but a fair bit has changed
just from 23.x to 24.0.

~~~
nonrecursive
Do you have any suggestions for learning emacs? I know that that 23.3 manual
is online, but I don't see anything for 24.0. Does it make sense to just use
23.3 and get used to that, then move to 24?

~~~
div
I would suggest just getting emacs 24. If you are on OSX you can build the
emacs head using homebrew. There's some cool stuff in 24 like the emacs
package manager (package.el) etc.

Once you have emacs 24 ready to go, it's a good idea to take a look at the
emacs starter kit: <https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit>

There's also a pretty good peepcode screencast on emacs, its a bit old, but
gives a good overview of a lot of the basics.

Once you feel like delving deeper, your best bet is to snoop around on
emacswiki.org

~~~
elgenie
If you're on OSX, <http://emacsformacosx.com/builds> is easier to deal with
than homebrew.

------
jvandonsel
I like O'Reilly as much as the next guy, but promoting this sale doesn't
strike me as something that should make HN.

~~~
tomh
+1 to that. I clicked through expecting an article and found an advert. Crass,
crass, crass.

~~~
rbanffy
Sorry about that.

My intention was pointing out a promo for two DRM-free e-books (I own both)
and the related Emacs vs. Vim vote.

------
rplnt
Another shop that forces me to login (thus create account) before I can review
my shipment options. I had to spend my energy to look around a site to find,
well.. nothing. So if you have a shop, please provide complete price before I
have to write down my mail and credit card details. Most of the time the
prices are fixed so you just need the country to tell the price. See ebay for
good example.

summary: I didn't buy any of the books because I didn't know how much I would
have to pay.

~~~
modokode
This deal is about ebooks, so I figure shipping would be whatever your isp
charges you for traffic in this particular case.

~~~
rplnt
Well, now I feel stupid. But still, if you sell something that needs to be
shipped - show the shipping price as soon as possible.

~~~
modokode
Yeah, I can actually agree on that. I think there's a few times where I've
registered and jumped through hoops only to find that, no indeed, "we do not
ship outside of the USA"

------
phzbOx
I've just recently switched to using Emacs with Evil (A Vim mode for emacs).
That's just simply awesome.

~~~
davidw
Emacs is powerful enough to emulate vi. Is the contrary true as well?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
There is a lisp written in VimL[1], so it's theoretically possible. Practical,
probably not. But possible. The long-running "emacs is a great OS without a
text editor" jab is partly true; Emacs is best described as a Lisp environment
that happens to be built around a text editor.

[1] <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1986>

~~~
davidw
I think that doing a usability study on both of them would reveal that the
usability people would run shrieking from the building once the basics were
explained to them. On one hand, you peck at the esc button like a hungry
chicken to do anything useful, with the other, your hands play twister on the
keyboard "pinky.... CTRL... thumb... ALT... index finger... S".

That said, I've never been even remotely tempted to move to anything besides
Emacs, and at this point, it's ingrained in my fingers, so non-Emacs things
really piss me off.

~~~
rcfox
> so non-Emacs things really piss me off

I'm just glad that C-x doesn't quit most applications while I'm trying to
save.

~~~
prakashk
As someone who accidentally closed many, many firefox tabs by pressing C-w,
especially when I am writing in a textbox which is even more annoying, I can't
imagine the havoc it would wreak if C-x were to quit apps.

I know there are alternatives like It's All Text extension [1] which lets me
hook emacs into Firefox, but it's not been updated for recent versions of
Firefox.

[1] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/>

------
moomin
Emacs is a great platform. Its only weakness is as a text editor. :)

~~~
almost
Currently running Emacs with Vimpulse. Best of both worlds or crazy franken-
editor? I've not decided yet :)

~~~
moomin
I use evil-mode myself. And yes, it's definitely a crazy franken-editor, but I
prefer it to dealing with vim's API. I wish that "." respected the previous
visual mode, though. Makes indentation a pain.

------
chbrown
It's hardly a shootout when you don't even control for price (not to mention
up-to-date-ness, as intranation noted).

