this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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Emacs

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cross post from reddit, OP: @[email protected]

Personally mine was just getting around buffers; creating new ones, splitting windows, deleting the ones I don’t need and so on. In the beginning I used to have just a single file open at a time like nano

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Definitely display-buffer-alist for me. I was using purpose-mode for the longest time but I think I finally managed to get display-buffer-alist working mostly how I want.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Where the hell is the "meta" key and why does every command tutorial online talk about it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Remnant of the type of keyboard that Emacs was developed on. Also the same place that the Super, Hyper, and Compose keys originate from

You can map it through your X server/Wayland compositor, but if not Emacs recognizes Alt and Esc as valid meta keys

[–] jerkface 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It took me a while to think in lisp.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I also moved from evil mode to meow a year or so back, which was sort of a big change for me:

https://drewsh.com/trying-out-meow

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah, clearly the emacs concept of windows is older (or they'd be called panes or something)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

keyboard macros are so good, and using consult to go through old ones is great UX.

I can never remember the kmacro ring commands so I used to just redo everything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Oh, I agree. I just never remember to use them until I'm done and realize I could have used a macro.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

You don't usually split buffers, maybe windows?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

ah yes an oopsie on my end :p

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

isn't it Frames in Emacs context?

not that i use or need it often, but terminology is (obviously) not that easy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Frame (what the window manager calls Window)>Window>Buffer. These are probably concepts that come from a text based terminal age.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Frames are the outer-most container for windows. I may be wrong on this, but there is 1 frame per instance of emacs, or emacs-client

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Now I'm curious whether the emacs concept of frames is older than the desktop environment concept of a window... And what exactly a new frame means in a tui environment. I make new frames all the time, but I'm usually in a GUI environment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Emacs is from 1975 I think? So it's very possible 🙂

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

@crmsnbleyd
Do/undo/redo as a non-linear construct broke my brain more than a little. Even after all this time it's still somewhat cryptic. Packages like `vundo' have been indispensable for visualizing the decidedly non-linear, non-circular, zig-zag of previous do, undo, and redo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

i just use undo-fu, maybe I should try using the vanilla undo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

@crmsnbleyd
I tend to use undo-fu more often for sure. Typically the simpler word processor style of managing things is all I need, and for code there's version control.

Honestly I'd say if you're happy with undo-fu there's no real reason to go back. Unless you're curious and want to explore, which I'd never discourage either!