Re: emacs for everything?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

William Xuuu <william_xuuu@163.com> wrote:
>hsh@freecode.dk (Henrik S. Hansen) writes:
>
>> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:
>>
>> Another thing I've wondered about is, do people use Emacs in (primarily)
>> X or console?
>>
>> For me it's the console.
>
>Me too, :-) The fontify, the fonts, are much much nicer under console than
>X. And the black background, good for eyes. I do most things within Emacs
>under console, except interactive bash, and some stuffs that have to be
>done under X, like viewing pdf, manipulating pictures, web browsing with
>pictures, etc.

I simply do not understand the sanity in what you have
described!  That is a straight jacket!

Except I'll grant that fonts in X are a problem.  I've spent
hours and hours finding fonts (for any given screen resolution)
that provide a nice, readable screen under both (x)emacs and in
an xterm.  But it is *definitely* worth it.

The "black background, good for eyes" comment is correct, but
misplaced.  Under X I use goldenrod2 as the foreground color
along with black for the background, and it is much like the old
"amber" monochrome monitors of years ago.  Which is to say, even
better than white on black, for the eyes!

But what you are missing by using a console is the extreme
versatility provided by a good window manager under X.  Your
message headers indicate that you are using Linux, which means
you have to switch between a console and X with a rather clunky
mechanism, and have extremely limited use of screen space when
in the console.  What I do, using fvwm2 as a window manager, is
set up a desktop manager with a 1x15 matrix of virtual desktops.
The desktop manager is on the left side of the screen, and is
sticky.  Hence I need about 1/8 inch of the left side to be
clear in order to use it with a mouse (and none of it needs to
be clear to use the keyboard to switch desktops).

At this moment I have 4 web (opera) browsers open in four
different desktops (all as different users).  I have at least a
dozen instances of an xterm running in various windows.  At a
glance I can see which desktop I am in, and with the click of a
mouse I can move to a different one, or I can use control-arrow
keys to scroll up or down through the list.  (If at any time I
want a window in any desktop moved to the same desktop as
another window, that is an almost instant operation requiring
about three clicks of the mouse to do.)

Consider the effort that you have to go through on a console if
you want to switch to a web browser.  I can select any of four
of them with a single mouse click.  And I could have them all
stacked up in the same desktop in short order too, which simply
cannot be done on a console.

Actually, the description above of where the desktop manager is
located isn't quite true anymore.  I do use that on a couple of
machines, but my main workstation has dual head video, with two
17 inch monitors.  Right now I am in the second down virtual
desktop, and have xemacs running gnus on the left monitor, using
up about 95% of the screen.  On the right monitor is the desktop
manager, along with xcalc, xload, xsysinfo, a large clock, xmms,
5 buttons for local programs, and an xterm that is logged into
my firewall.  Everything on the right monitor is sticky and stays
in place regardless of which of the 15 desktops I'm in at any given
time.

All of which is to say that fvwm2 under X is a *far* more
versatile window manager than emacs is!  Emacs *is* great
though, and if for some reason one is 1) logged in remotely or
2) using a simple terminal, (all of which was very commonly the
case back when the "emacs as a window manager" concept
originated) then it is *really* nice to have all the facilities
of emacs available.

But using it on a typical system console, with X available, is
wearing a straight jacket.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com