GNU Emacs 26.2 Released With Unicode 11.0 Support

[Cape]

I prefer vi...

[/popcorn]

One S P A C E M A C S to rule them all!!

[brrrrttttt]

I never learnt vi or emacs, they are just confusing for me.
The only text-based text editor I learnt is nano, but I don't use it.

Normally I use Visual Studio Code or Atom.

I only have 32 GiB RAM in my workstation, not enough for those. I find they don't run well in a terminal either.

[blackiwid]

I never learnt vi or emacs, they are just confusing for me.
The only text-based text editor I learnt is nano, but I don't use it.

Normally I use Visual Studio Code or Atom.

Been there well I used back then a bit nano and gedit...

Vim is pretty straight forward you like it or not, the advantage of vim is that you get a descent productive system for text editing, that is more efficiant than the shortcuts in other editors and that lots of programs support the shortcuts. The advantage of their shortcuts is that it's a modal system, which means that you don't have to press Ctrl + letter or alt+ letter to do things but you can use the normal letters as commands, which is theoretical good for your pinky finger and because it allows more complex commands gets you more speed.

It's not that confusing but you have to learn it like learning a different keyboard layout. I don't think that is that confusing per se, it just needs some work. you can look at vimgolf website to see with how few keyboard shortcuts they can transform text and then compare that how much you would need in your editor, if that are tasks you do often then it fast makes sense to get over that learning curve to use it.

Emacs on the other hand is confusing, because it starts from the wrong premise that it is a editor. It is a lisp interpreter that comes with some sort of editor code with bad default configuration.

The standart keybindings have a logic, they are easier to remember but harder to press. If you don't do lot's of text editing you maybe can make it work but all that do lot's of editing should not use the default keybindings in emacs, they are not ergonomic.

But Emacs power lies in it's configurability not only can you use it for thousand other tasks like email, chat clients, etc but you can also configure the keybindings how you like.

So let's say you like the vim keybindings you can install evil mode or use the mentioned spacemacs version, if you like the usual gedit / notepad / etc style you can try cua-mode, or look at ergoemacs mode.
If you want the power of modal modes but still more ergonomic / traditional windows style keybindings you either can check out the optional modal feature in ergoemacs mode or look at flykeys or many other. Of course you also can configure your own keybindings if you want.

Hydra mode is there also a good way to define very good keyboard shortcuts as example if you want to zoom in or zoom out instead of the usual C-"+" and C-"-" you can define F2 as start key and then 2 keys that you have to press to zoom in / out, without holding F2 or Ctrl the whole time.

But Vims main advantage is the keybindings, for emacs that is only a small side aspect, but it has to be mentioned because the default keybinding is not very good, so it's probable the thing that most users will shy away.

Now to other advantages the git UI is crazy good, but then there is E-shell, which allows you to have machine independent aliases and configuration, has some sort of resume functionality, a local history. Allows you theming over all your tasks so if you like some sort of dark mode you don't need to configure every application that way but you just use emacs to do everything and you are done.

There is Tramp support which is pretty powerful and of course it's a full fledged IDE.

To make it short Emacs is basically what you want it to be. Then there is org mode which includes a ascii based spreadsheet system, literal coding and much much more.

A mode-system that has special keybindings / functions for different file types, a great integrated help system and a easy backend to even easily code small things yourself. Also if you are no coder you can type in macros and use them if you need that.

Emacs can do everything that vi(m) can do so for a beginner I don't see any reason to use Vi over Emacs, I heard some myths that even with Evil mode or Spaceemacs would behave still slightly differeent and not as good as vim but I attribute that to them saying it's not 1:1 like vim so it must be automatically bad, like every person that have to migrate would say.

Another point is that you can change settings/behaviour and add new functionality in runtime, which sounds maybe trivial but you can't do that it most other editors at least not that easy.

I stop here because I think more information would confuse you more than help you and I hope I clearified a bit and reduced your "confusion".

Emacs is not a love on first sight you have to give it a chance but it's worth it. I regret heavily that I did not start using it 10 years or more earlier.

[cybertraveler]

git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git

Who still needs releases? I cannot wait until the Cairo support in Emacs leaves the experimental stage. True Emacs addicts git-pull daily.

Presumably the benefits of rendering using Cairo are:

• Potential for hardware acceleration
• It's a widely used and developed backend.
• They can eventually drop their own custom backend to reduce LOC
• People can start developing plugins which draw fancy vector graphics to the editor area.

Anything else?

[M@GOid]

Not really about Vi vs Emacs, but still can make you chuckle a bit:

[tildearrow]

I only have 32 GiB RAM in my workstation, not enough for those. I find they don't run well in a terminal either.

I agree. Better to have a power editor than to have a waste of memory.

Sadly, only a few agree.

[phuclv]

I prefer vim. vi has many annoyances, such as pressing backspace doesn't erase chars from your screen (when I see that behavior I think I'm not deleting anything) and not being able to use the cursor keys.

vi on most distros nowadays is just a symlink to vim. And ones who don't use some vi version that has vim features. I've never had to run `vim` on my PCs, just `vi` is enough