Re: [emacs-wiki-discuss] Complexity of computing w/ Emacs [was: emacs-wiki-blog: what's that?]

[Allen Halsey]

Sacha Chua wrote:
> Planner's complexity is like Emacs' complexity. Outsiders say, "Emacs
> is way too complex to be considered a simple editor!" We bonk them on
> the head, show them the menu bars and the tutorial, and teach them how
> to use Emacs as a straight text editor if they really want one. (Or as
> a flashcard program, or as a tetris game, or whatever simple thing
> they want to get started with.) But Emacs' complexity and
> wonderfulness lies in its awesome flexibility. It can be nearly
> anything for anyone. =)
>
> You can use planner and remember to journal. =) You can publish your
> tasks and notes on the same page. planner-rss can publish your notes
> as RSS, too. My blog at http://sacha.free.net.ph is done in Planner.

I'm a newbie emacs user. I'm intrigued by the power and flexibility of 
computing within Emacs. I've seen the amazing results you and others 
have achieved with publishing your notes and TODO lists using emacs-wiki 
and planner.

But extrapolating from my progress these last 6 weeks, I feel I have a 
two years to go before I achieve effectiveness in computing in a Emacs + 
Planner + Gnus environment. And even that timeline I'm not so sure of.

I think I'll eventually get the hang of elisp. That is not my main worry.

My main worry is whether the efficiency of emacs UI can ever rise to 
that of a suite of dedicated GUI applications.

Consider, for example, switching between applications.

In a GUI world, I have a buttons on my task bar for the applications I 
am currently running:

  - Thunderbird Mail Client,

  - A Java IDE

  - Mozilla Sunbird Calendar Application

  - A couple of terminals

  - An IRC client

  - A text editor with multiple tabs for keeping notes and TODO lists.

To read mail, I click the button on my task bar for Thunderbird. 
Likewise for the other apps.  Simple.

Emacs can subsume the functionality of all these apps in a single 
instance. That's one button on task bar. But I hesitate to embark on 
this approach because I am absolutely terrified that I'll click that one 
button and drown in a sea of buffers.

I think maybe I just haven't learned the right tricks yet. Should I run 
each major app in separate frames? In separate instances? Is using an 
alernate Window Manager like RatPoison the answer?

Allen