A few more (personal) highlights from the release:
* New minor mode 'pixel-scroll-mode' provides smooth pixel-level scrolling.
* The networking code has been reworked so that it's more
asynchronous than it was (DNS resolution and TLS negotiation do not block Emacs main thread).
* Emacs no longer prompts about editing a changed file when the file's content is unchanged. Instead of only checking the modification time, Emacs now also checks the file's actual content before prompting the user.
* A new submode of 'html-mode', 'mhtml-mode', is now the default mode for html files. This mode handles indentation, fontification, and commenting for embedded JavaScript and CSS.
* Improved CSS mode
* Intercepting hotkeys on Windows 7 and later now works better.
I suggest to anyone serious w/ Emacs to follow the master branch. I have been compiling once a week since almost a year and did not experience any breakage. My routine is fetch, see the output from "git diff HEAD..FETCH_HEAD -- etc/NEWS | less", pull --ff, compile and install. The benefit being you don't get a whole bunch of news when you update to a major version, but get there gradually; and also the master has the newer features. They keep that branch really stable.
I similarly encourage any Mac users who are serious about emacs to use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's fork, which adds several usability improvements that RMS refuses to endorse and is just generally a better experience on Mac. Mainline GNU Emacs feels clunky and obsolete by comparison.
Also, if you're worried about the occasional regression, you can archive an installer package of the OS X .app (--with-ns) version each time you build by adding something along the lines of
if you also want to install. The resulting package is also a handy way to push the updated version to multiple Macs.
Note, however, that I've reverted to a previous version maybe twice in the past 5+ years of weekly builds (from the GNU master branch), and even in these cases, the regression didn't affect core editing functionality (last one I remember, editing over ssh via tramp was failing in certain circumstances [that I never got around to working out in detail]).
Skimming the readme, I see that it's almost entirely mac specific and mostly UX. I can't say they are completely useless but nothing really vital, except the features inherited from Carbon, which seem useful (I really like the concept of AppleScript, i.e. all programs responding to a single programming interface; I guess DBus is supposed to do sth. similar on FreeDesktop, no?).
Once there was an Desktop-Environment called KDE 3. It has this Interprocess-Communication called dcop. Around that time there were serious attempts made to reach a similar level like AppleScript. There even were plans to recreate the Wokflow(?)-App from MacOS. But then KDE4 came, DBUS replaced dcop and things became a complicated mess. Today DBUS is still used, but the spirit to externally automate your apps seems to mostly gone, and remaining abilitys are just a shadow of past promises.
If anyone else is confused, "sth" is an abbreviation for "something" that was popularised in some countries by dictionaries for non-native English speakers. It's common in continental Europe and the Middle East but obscure in English-speaking countries; "smth", and "sthg" are other common abbreviations that also came from bilingual dictionaries.
Wow, interesting. FWIW, English is my L2 indeed, but I picked that "sth" up from the Internet, and thought that it was some sort of internet slang abbreviation. Thanks for the TIL!
It bothers me a tiny bit that 'sth' is a thing, because it seems so unnecessary to me (outside of perhaps T9 style texting?). I imagine it generates more confusion than it saves effort, considering the word's relative (in)frequency.
But I am also fascinated that this a apparently a thing :).
That Emacs should not give an advantage to non-free operating systems.
Now, because Emacs is free software, this doesn't prevent anyone such as Yamamoto to go and modify Emacs. Rms doesn't want his officially-sanctioned version to have Mac-only improvements, but he also defends the GPL which allows other people to do so. Rms isn't going to go and tell Yamamoto to take down his fork or anything (but he probably will tell macOS users at every opportunity that they are working with an abusive OS).
Couldn't one way out of the impasse be to enhance GNUstep to implement the macOS APIs/features which Yamamoto's fork uses? RMS doesn't want to add features only supported on proprietary platforms, but so long as one free software platform supports the same feature, that should answer RMS' objection.
Yes, this is more or less what rms wants to happen: that GNU gets the benefits of macOS. Then when both OSes can use those colourful emojis, he will accept the code into Emacs.
It might be abusive in the sense that it's nonfree but at least it's functional.
Year of the Linux desktop jokes aside, I've just lately got sick of how broken Linux is on most laptops, even ThinkPads which are supposed to be the gold standard.
My ThinkPad never had working suspend resume, for example, which is just basic stuff that Linux can't seem to get right.
I'm not 24 and childfree any more. I don't have time to fiddle with acpi or systemd.
I've used two Thinkpads. I'm currently on an X1 5th gen running Debian stable and it's the most blissful computer experience I've ever had. Everything works, the damn thing is fast, 12 hours of battery life and it's so light. I don't understand this magic but I'm glad it's there.
Previously I was on an x250 also on Debian stable which also worked flawlessly until I dropped it hard. It was just a little heavier and a little slower than my current X1.
On the topic of Macs being stable; I've seen my coworkers experience a lot of grief during the past few months with some macOS updates.
I'm not saying that the experience is in general better with one setup or another, just that mine has been good. I'm sure your experiences are valid too.
FWIW my wife and I have been running Debian on X-series Thinkpads for years with no problems except for having trouble some printers and with the occasional WiFi hotspot. Linux on the desktop Just Works in our experience.
I have to run Windows 10 on a system for work and I have to say the Linux install and setup experience is way nicer.
Mostly because they'd add a feature on a non-free platform (macOS) that is otherwise missing from a free platform. Notably, color emoji have worked fine forever on macOS, and were then _intentionally broken_ (when I say broken I mean the UI blocked for about ten seconds and then finally either displays a placeholder or something similarly less featureful). The reason for this is because Linux font rendering can't get color emoji right.
Instead of blocking these features, won’t it be better to go fix he free platform? What he is doing only promotes mediocre free software to propagate that will only make user switch to other non-free alternatives - Vsnet and sublime are taking away many emacs users.
RMS isn't the god of all free software. A GNOME desktop is composed of hundreds of bits of software, and it encompasses many unrelated individuals, at least three big orgs (GNOME, GNU, FreeDesktop/SytemD people), and carries a baggage of decades of history. You can't say, in such a situation, unlike what Apple and Microsoft do to their users many times, that the new way is this and everybody has to just eat it up.
WRT users switching, let them do. One thing I'd really fear would be Emacs becoming just another attention whore of a piece of software. Not only, but also, options and competition are very nice things to have. VSCode is not that interesting to me, but I really like Sublime Text; I can easily suggest it to anybody instead of Emacs if they are not into the idea of using a highly- and live-customisable and very composable environment and want sth. that just works.
On the strength of your recommendation, and an unwillingness to wait for the arch repos to update emacs, I went ahead and installed the master branch. So I'm now on version ... 27.0.50. Skipped 26.1. :)
As you said, the change was smooth and I got to enjoying all the new fixes and stuff. But my word, it was over a gigabyte of downloading, which I didn't expect! Still, worth it.
For those unfamiliar with GNU Emacs version numbers, they always start at X.1, not X.0, so this is the first major release after 25.1 released in September 2016.
Lest someone misread this and think that Emacs hasn't had an update in 2 years: That says "major release". The previous release was the 25.3 minor release in September 2017.
And least anyone misunderstand your comment and misses the big picture, those are all in principle minor bugfix (although with some new features).
The release you're referring to has maybe 20 lines of non-autogenerated code changed, and was "an emergency release to fix a security vulnerability in Emacs".
By and large new Emacs features only get released every 2-4 years. If you write any non-trivial Emacs code you're only targeting the major releases, and if you're contributing to Emacs you can expect other users to have your feature in the in their hands by the time your newborn is old enough to walk around and argue with you.
It's one of the remaining free software projects that really takes its time with releases.
It's a mature, solid platform, it can't just "move fast and break things".
> and if you're contributing to Emacs you can expect other users to have your feature in the in their hands by the time your newborn is old enough to walk around and argue with you.
Lest someone misread that and comes away with a misconception about the big picture - that's true if you're contributing to Emacs proper. I.e. you're writing C and Emacs Lisp code which is meant to be included for release with the main project.
99% of the things you can dream of adding to Emacs can be done in Elisp, and shared with other people immediately. Since Emacs is a stable platform, you probably won't have to worry about the underlying API breaking until your current newborn is old enough to start asking where children come from.
I'm not a programmer but I have dabbled in code for a while. Emacs honestly made me love using my computer again.
Give yourself a full day for the tutorial and then try to stick to it even though for a while you will be slower and clumsier at everything. This will pay off massively.[0]
Make it part of your routine. Apart from coding in it, use it for email (mu4e/offlineimap), for git (magit), as a local and remote file manager, for writing notes and running a diary (org mode), for submitting papers (LaTeX/Auctex), for your terminal...
Speaking for myself, it actually improves my quality of life, and I feel like I've only scratched the surface.
I'd skip e-mail at the beginning, because it can be a real pain to set up (not necessarily on Emacs end - but the whole offlineimap thing, credentials, etc.). But I very much recommend magit - if you're using git, it'll blow your mind.
Spend another half an hour, only effectively. Open the tutorial, do it. Sure, the keybindings are weird[0], but try to approach them without preconceptions or prejudice. Imagine you're learning professional software for a task you've never done before. Say, 3D modeling or audio work. There, you would just accept the conventions without second-guessing them.
Work on the tutorial, then spend about half an hour to a hour writing some text and code, so that you get used to interactions. Save a couple of files. Open a couple of files. You should be now comfortable enough to do basic work in Emacs. From there, it's practice, reading and exploration.
The cool thing about Emacs is that it's self-documenting. CTRL+h is your friend (in Emacs-speak, C-h). You remember a key combination but are not sure what it does? C-h k key-combination. Remember a function but not where is it bound? C-h w command, or C-h f command - the latter will give you a full documentation of it (and works for other elisp functions as well). Sorta-remember the command? C-h a whatyouremember - will run a regexp search on a list of all commands. Don't remember neither the key nor the command? M-x apropos whatyouremember - this will run a regex search on everything.
Also, the full documentation for Emacs should be available under C-h i. Or, if you are serious about Emacs and have some money to spare, I can recommend this book: https://www.masteringemacs.org/. It will get you up to speed in no time.
Beyond that, Google around. Look for Emacs guides, interesting packages, and interesting Emacs configs (search terms: .emacs, emacs dotfile). They'll introduce you to various productivity and life quality features for which Emacs is so loved.
--
[0] - they're weird because they predate the modern fashion. What you're used to came later, from IBM, and was popularized Microsoft.
The way I learned Emacs was by immersing myself in it. I just decided that I would only use Emacs for the next 2 weeks at work, and if it slowed my productivity to a crawl, so be it (it was clearly during a time when there weren't any deadlines). I also was sitting next to someone who had been using it for a few years so I could just yell out "how do I open a file again??" and he'd yell back "control-x, control-f!"
A couple years later our vi friend expressed interest and did the same thing. His monitor was littered with little post-it notes until the muscle memory kicked in.
You might be thinking, is it really worth my time to learn something esoteric like Emacs, but there are many nice perks once it's been learned. It turns out the default keybindings in readline (and every program that uses readline) are Emacs keys, so it's a exciting feeling realizing you just hit C-t in some random program and it transposed the characters like you wanted. macOS also has many Emacs keybindings in the default text field (where they don't conflict with standard mac keys).
Okay, more seriously, it took me about a month to stop hating Emacs in 2002. I only started because I thought I had no choice. I was a math undergrad, I wanted to write math, and they plopped me in front of Emacs and LaTeX running on Debian. Alright then, I'm here to learn new mathematics, so I'm also going to learn new ways to type mathematics. This is just how we do things in university, I thought.
Fifteen years laters, I haven't stopped using and learning about Emacs. I can't do any serious writing without it.
So, my advice is, if you don't want to keep learning Emacs forever, just stay with whatever you like right now. As a general rule, the Emacs faith does not proselytise. Some of us tolerate Emacs, but you'll have to try it yourself to see if you do.
Well that's too bad, as people have done some serious writing using simper tools - a pen, a typewriter... Isn't Notepad (on Windows) a sufficiently good tool to type, say, a novel in? Less distracting it is, for sure. (Well, I heard some people say that Notepad requires an OS to run, whereas Emacs is an OS in its own right, but really?)
Correcting mistakes on a pen is labourious, same with a typewriter. I find Notepad severely limiting too when it comes editing text (how do I set a mark? how do I kill the current line? or what about just the current word? how do I access the kill ring?) not to mention that all of the keybindings are wrong.
I can use something other than Emacs if I have to, but it all feels like I'm tying both arms behind my back and writing with a pen held in my teeth.
I came to Emacs from decades of using vim. I installed evil-mode, and then spent about 10 hours a day for about 3 months learning more, installing packages, and tweaking my config until it matched and exceeded what I had in vim.
This is a never-ending process.. and now, about 5 years later, I'm still learning and still tweaking (though my config has been mostly stable for a long time).
I wouldn't necessarily recommend Emacs to someone who's not willing to put in the time and effort to make it in to the editor they need... though they don't necessarily have to spend as much time or effort on it as I have. Everybody has different needs.
Fortunately we live in an age of plentiful, easy to get information, so if you are interested then learning more is just a few clicks away. I'd recommend joining #emacs on the FreeNode IRC network, r/emacs on Reddit, and the Emacs StackExchange. The people there can give you lots of pointers and detailed help when you need it.
It's not you. The defaults are pretty hostile, in my opinion. It took me three attempts over many years to fall in love with Emacs.
I'm now using Emacs for everything: shell, git, email, file browser, window manager, IRC, slack, as a pdf reader, ... oh, and to edit text files.
My advice is to keep using it. When you notice that something is really weird, run `M-x package-list-packages` to see if someone has already written a package to change the weird behaviour. Ask questions on emacs.stackexchange.com, but also ask Emacs; use C-h to learn about why things are the way they are.
If you don't understand why people love Emacs, consider reading this:
They're mostly old. So I guess they might be hostile to the young. I actually dislike some of the newer things like transient-mark-mode. I don't want all of that highlighting just because I have a selection region, and was quick to disable it when they enabled it to make it more "modern":
Being young isn't the reason for feeling it hostile. Old ones just got used to it when it was the best they had back then.
I've been using vim for 15 years or something but its default is insanely hostile that the default hotkeys aren't even funny. You'd even feel wet that you can save a file with just 2 keys under Windows in Notepad compared to 4 keys that's not exactly intuitive until your muscle remembers it or modify it to something sane. (I use a single 'space' under command mode to save.)
I was wondering that too. However it ended up having the best highlighting and indenting packages for the languages I was using. It was available on most platforms and most of all worked in an SSH session.
I wouldn't try to learn everything at once would just learn:
1) How to quit
2) How to save a file
3) Basic navigation: up, down, left, right, end of line, beginning of line
4) How to cut a line, and how to paste a line
Some of those you might already know from using bash or even basic text editing on macOS.
I tried giving Emacs a shot again recently because I now use windows at work and it's easier to get Emacs working on windows with all the features rather than trying to get vim/neovim with myriad of different outside plugins.
But I won't be switching simply because indentation in html/css/js files is off and apparently Emacs is bad at handling stuff like jsx and web stuff in general. Shame.
Patience, mostly. Emacs takes a very big up-front investment, but it pays off in the long run.
> I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up
Yeah, that was my first experience, too. ;-) Don't rush yourself. Come back every couple of months and give it another try. Work your way through the tutorial, and if you feel like it's just too hard, don't listen to yourself. You will be amazed at what you can achieve on determination and persistence.
Also, there are IRC channels and discussion boards waiting for your questions. Do not be afraid to ask "stupid" questions. More likely than not, people will be happy to help you.
Last but not least, emacs comes with pretty good documentation. Learning how to to use emacs' online documentation, both the texinfo manual and the online help, can get you surprisingly far.
Patience and curiosity. I started using emacs because practically speaking it was the only game in town for writing common lisp. Spending so much time in it I began to learn how to get around. A good autocomplete engine and the fact that everything is namespaced means that a lot of functionality is easily discoverable. For example `M-x org- TAB TAB` shows me most of the interesting things I can do in org-mode, and if that's missing `C-h f org- TAB TAB` gives me every function that's defined in the org namespace. The documentation in the help viewer is generally complete, and jump-to-definition means that I can trivially see how something's being done.
Once the basics have been learned I think there's also an implicit assumption that the user hacks on emacs (or at least their init.el) to make the things they do easier. In a sense emacs is a make-your-own-IDE-toolkit -- pretty much everything about how it works can be changed if you like.
I keep hearing people mentioning vim and emacs but I have a strong suspicion that if people spent the same time that they now spend learning and customizing vim and emacs learning a more modern IDE or advanced editor they'd be even more effective (except when they need to edit over ssh).
Personally I use Visual Studio Code all day now. But I've also been happy with Netbeans, IntelliJ, eclipse and Sublime. I rarely have to use a mouse or touchpad, it's all alt-tab, wait-a-second, alt-tab, edit, ctrl-s, ctrl-p type parts of a filename, ctrl-arrowkeys, F2 enter new name for a variable or field etc etc.
I've done one honest attempts at learning emacs (and I kind of enjoyed it) + lots of involuntary training on vim (yes, I prefer it to nano).
> if people spent the same time that they now spend learning and customizing vim and emacs learning a more modern IDE or advanced editor they'd be even more effective (except when they need to edit over ssh)
Or except if they need to blog. Or manage repositories. Or manage tasks. Or read e-mail. Or...
The thing with Emacs is that it offers you an universal, consistent interface for everything text. That includes code, but also prose, notes, tasks, repositories, file systems, etc. The interface itself is also hugely extensible (with lots of packages readily available through built-in package manager), and all that extensibility works for everything.
IMO, spending more time in a typical IDE will make you a more effective programmer. But it doesn't extend beyond programming. When you do something else, you have to switch tools. In this way, spending time on Emacs has a better payoff, because the scope is both deeper and broader.
> The thing with Emacs is that it offers you an universal, consistent interface for everything text.
This. As my programming career extended past its first decade, I began (like many people) to feel the fatigue of constantly adapting to new editors, email readers, file managers, etc. The long-term _consistency_ of Emacs gives me an anchoring point and frees me to pay attention to deeper patterns - data structures, architectures, concepts - things that matter more than the tooling du jour.
Emacs is shit because despite its age, it does not even meet some sane minimum requirements for text editors. No localisation. No tabs. Window cannot be maximised prior to setting some obscure option. Menu items and buttons do not have underlined letters (i.e. accelerators). The vast majority of the options cannot be accessed through the menu or dialogues, instead you get a non-editable document with embedded buttons. Configuration is stored as code. Keys cannot be rebound from the menu.
The list could go on and on. I am thoroughly disappointed with the software, I wouldn't recommend to anyone expending patience on it.
pls don't say that :( there's exactly 0 ppl in the world who get paid for writing emacs. nobody is selling the editor as snake oil liniment that ought to remove all the grievances.
> No localisation
what do you mean? I can read/type in emacs in all 3 human lang I know/use daily.
> No tabs
true
although `M-x speedbar` can display the list of all open buffers in a vertical fashion
> Window cannot be maximised prior to setting some obscure option
I usually just press F11
> Menu items and buttons do not have underlined letters (i.e. accelerators)
true
> The vast majority of the options cannot be accessed through the menu
true
> or dialogues, instead you get a non-editable document with embedded buttons
why do you care if it's not a 'native' dlg? the mouse works. C-s works.
> Configuration is stored as code
hehehe
that's the whole point, m8!
> Keys cannot be rebound from the menu.
true
> The list could go on and on
I was hoping you'd mention the idiocy (I cannot find a more proper word) w/ buffers that have long lines. every time I open some 2MB xml file that was generated as 1 string, emacs suddenly becomes dog slow. this is what should be criticized, not the inability to rebound keys from the menu, imo.
Are you involved with emacs development or just a user?
> there's exactly 0 ppl in the world who get paid for writing emacs
I, too, am a free software author in my spare time and not paid for it. Not being paid for a labour of love does not make one exempt from criticism.
>> No localisation
> what do you mean?
The software's user interface and on-line documentation should be implemented in my language, but it's available only in English.
> M-x speedbar
That displays a hierarchical file browser in a separate window, not a list of documents.
>> Configuration is stored as code
> that's the whole point
Occasionally the sheer power is useful because a programming language gives you the power to do things that are not possible or very hard otherwise.
But for the vast majority of cases, most of the time, configuration should be stored in the moral equivalent of an INI file. That way I can process it externally. As it is now, I need to code a parser for elisp and replicate a decent chunk of the emacs runtime environment. That's just too difficult and time-consuming for anyone.
> Not being paid for a labour of love does not make one exempt from criticism.
I'm fine w/ criticism; I'm just of an opinion that the word "shit" is a bit too much; also I'm fascinated how the current emacs maintainer handles such a complex proj
> The software's user interface
which part? the majority of the user-visible 'interface' consists of so called interactive elisp cmds (runnable via M-x ...); the help for such cmds (or the whole modes) gets extracted from the corresponding fn comments & gets updated in real time when/if the code changes.
> and on-line documentation should be implemented in my language, but it's available only in English.
this is tough. the user's manual is huge. it'd probably take a year for a pro translator to produce a meaningful result
the elisp manual is even bigger
the tutorial is available in multiple lang, though
>> M-x speedbar That displays a hierarchical file browser in a separate window, not a list of documents.
click w/ the rigth btn in the speedbar win: a popup menu will appear. select speedbar->displays->buffers
A half-hour is not quite enough. :) I did the tutorial a couple times and found a reference card somewhere which I kept next to my computer for awhile. At first I used "Options > Use CUA Keys" so I could use existing muscle memory for basic things like copy/cut/paste. Then I just started using it for work and whenever I needed a text editor. I did this during a slow period at work so I wouldn't stress myself out. These days I'd probably start with one of the Emacs starter kits so there are nice and pretty defaults out of the box.
My previous editor was notepad.exe. I just started using Emacs like a glorified Notepad and gradually figured out various features. The interactive help system is fantastic. C-h is your friend.
I wonder what kind of car Emacs would be... maybe an unimog? Or a VW bus. And what would Vim be? And NeoVim? And XEmacs? And Atom? JetBrains? Nano? Ed?
No. Flycheck is the 7th most downloaded emacs package and the 3rd most popular package that's not a library. It's directly behind helm and magit. You can't just replace something like this with a thin stroke. The only reason flymake was rewritten was because the emacs devs couldn't get flycheck into emacs core, which IMHO is for the best. emacs releases is just too slow.
Completely OT, but I remember when building Emacs was like "there goes my afternoon". On my current desktop (which is kind of snazzy, I admit), it takes less than 30 seconds wall clock time. This is one aspect of The Future(tm) I definitely appreciate. ;-)
You have one mother of a desktop there. Or, you're not doing a clean build :).
For me, full clean make takes AFAIR something like 10 to 20 minutes. i5-2400, 12GB RAM, SSD drive. Still, totally worth it :). I've been running Emacs 26 for 2 months now.
Does anyone know if the concurrency support has made it into TRAMP yet? I recently switched to sshfs because I couldn't stand having TRAMP block my editor while saving remote files.
It is not an idea that is supported by the whole Emacs community. It is an idea that is supported by the Guile community and RMS. Work has been done to make Guile Emacs work, but it is still slow (as it doesn't seem to compile elisp before running it) and somewhat experimental.
It really just needs someone to make it work more reliably and then demonstrate that it is a desirable thing not just in theory but in practise. Nothing short of doing the work would be sufficient to convince the most active Emacs developers.
The person who had been doing most of the work on Guile Emacs isn't currently making progress on this end, so other interested people are welcome to participate in the effort.
(I'm a Guiler and Emacs user and strongly support the idea of letting Emacs sit on top of the Elisp implementation in Guile.)
This hasn't always been this way, though, as far as I know. It is also not an insurmountable obstacle, but it is one of many small things that make Emacs developers worry.
Another problem that makes Guile Emacs somewhat less attractive is the difference in string handling. Emacs deals well with improperly encoded strings (because that's what people throw at it), whereas Guile prefers to either deal with byte streams or properly encoded strings. Shuffling strings back and forth between an Elisp and a native Guile representation is not very attractive.
* New minor mode 'pixel-scroll-mode' provides smooth pixel-level scrolling.
* The networking code has been reworked so that it's more asynchronous than it was (DNS resolution and TLS negotiation do not block Emacs main thread).
* Emacs no longer prompts about editing a changed file when the file's content is unchanged. Instead of only checking the modification time, Emacs now also checks the file's actual content before prompting the user.
* A new submode of 'html-mode', 'mhtml-mode', is now the default mode for html files. This mode handles indentation, fontification, and commenting for embedded JavaScript and CSS.
* Improved CSS mode
* Intercepting hotkeys on Windows 7 and later now works better.