Learning Emacs, part 2.5
Just read this post: Switching editors is just as hard as switching languages. Fortunately my experiences with Emacs have been somewhat different. I was not looking forward to the steep learning curve, but to my surprise it only took a few days to get up to working speed. I've probably only scratched the surface of what's possible, but I can use it without much problem for everyday Scheme hacking... and that was my intention.
To summarize it, here's what helped me:
- Read a decent book (as I mentioned before, I chose Learning GNU Emacs)
- Remap keys to something more familiar, if you don't want to use the funky C-this C-that combos for common actions; e.g. I use ⌘O to open a file, rather than C-x C-f; etc.
- Study other people's .emacs files. There's a ton of them online. For example, here.
- Take advantage of Emacs' introspective features, like C-h k and C-h f, to quickly see what a key combination or function does.
Right now, the only thing that really bugs me is that Emacs still likes to recenter the screen every now and then, for no apparent reason... that drives me up the wall. A "feature" like that should not be enabled by default. But aside from that, I think it's kind of an OK editor. ;-)
Kevin Hammack said,
February 24, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
> Emacs still likes to recenter the screen every now and then, for no apparent reason...
That's a feature. If you want to turn it off:
(setq scroll-conservatively 1)
Kevin Hammack said,
February 24, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
> A "feature" like that should not be enabled by default.
Says you. ;-)
Kevin Hammack said,
February 24, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: you can learn a lot with M-x apropos. That's how I found the variable that controls scrolling:
M-x apropos
scroll
Hans Nowak said,
February 24, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
"""That's a feature. If you want to turn it off:
(setq scroll-conservatively 1)"""
I use that, and also scroll-step, but it still does it sometimes, seemingly randomly. It annoys me because no editor I've ever used has this "feature", so it just seems awkward and unnecessary. :-]