Re: Emacs users a dying breed?

[James Freer]

> so what does vim better then Emacs?

I've just read through this topic's threads. I'd like to make the
following points. Firstly i use a text editor for editing writing text
as an author of several newsletters not as a programmer. Recently i
decided to have a look at emacs and vi/vim as i've been using gedit,
bluefish and one or two other GUI editors.

Several of you have made the point emacs is declining on google
trends... i don't think that's fair. Try vim it is also declining...
yet nvi is level and vi is increasing, bluefish decreasing...gedit i
can't remember now. How has google trends worked out it's statistics?

My uses are different to those of a programmer. I need linebreak [word
line wrapping or softwrap i think it's sometimes called], spell
checking, word count, auto indent, and bookmarking. Basics in fact and
yet few editors that can actually do this. Just Jedit, bluefish,
gedit, vim and emacs. Also use alpine for mail so want to use the
alternative editor rather than pico. Not that i'm knocking pico - it
has a lovely feature that few editors have... when getting towards the
bottom of the screen it automatically scrolls up half a screen - for
writing that's lovely.

Emacs and vim do what i want. Emacs i struggle with as it is still
slow if using with alpine and the VM and Rmail take too long to set up
[for me... bit like trying to set up Mutt - managed to do it and then
forgot what i did and got fed up with it]. For me emacs is large does
a lot well and does a lot badly. mg - a light version of emacs doesn't
do quite enough. The emacs book is still quite hard to follow and that
lets emacs down - i even tried xemacs and it just flickered and it
seems they haven't moved forward with that project. VIm  it has the
vimbook and it's very good - if someone wants to learn they want to
get on with it... that is much in it's favour. But i agree with what
folk have said - a modal editor is an 'odd animal'. Emacs is a bit
like Jedit to many it's impregnable which puts folk off.

I wish a lite version of emacs was available that left out some of the
bloat to be honest. Forget email, calendar etc things which it does
badly. vim/vi gets it's popularity as it's easier to get started on...
albeit with this modal setup. I used to use wordstar and so you could
say my natural choice would be Joe but it doesn't do bookmarks that
well and other things i need. Nano is a very odd set up in that the
linebreak works but then you can't convert a file back to continuous
lines.

What do i use at present while i'm still trying to get used to vim or
emacs - pico for email and bluefish. Both vim and emacs development
have gone down strange routes and yet both are popular.

james