I'm an Emacs user trying to learn a software tool that is best run from a terminal. The default set-up to get the most out of that tool is to use xterm for interaction and call Vim for editing. One could simply replace Vim with Emacs in this setup, but then one would spend most of the time working outside of Emacs in an Xterm.
I figured out there is (Multi)Term-mode in Emacs, but it is really hard to find out about its pros and cons. So I have the following questions:
[Without X11]: Why or when would anybody use Emacs (Mutli)Term instead of Console & TMUX (or GNU Screen)?
[With X11] How does Emacs (Multi)Term compare to Xterm?
Obviously speed is one criteria for comparison, but I'm sure there are other.
You'd use Emacs term over tmux/screen if you're more familiar with Emacs and already use it for many other things and/or if you spend more time in Emacs than in the terminal.
Emacs's Term is much less sophisticated and much less reliable than xterm. But it works within Emacs so if you live in Emacs, it might be a good option.
Note that you may also prefer to use Emacs's M-x shell functionality, which gives you a command line without giving you an actual terminal emulator. That means that the commands are edited in Emacs before being sent to the underlying command-line program, so all the usual Emacs editing can be used there (and the history manipulation as well as command completion is performed by Emacs as well, which can be great, or can be disappointing (e.g. if the completion needs info which Emacs does not have)).
Related
When I'm coding I'm using multiple "emacs nowindow mode", each one oppened in different terminal. It is really annoying when you have the same file on multiple emacs. Is there a way to synchronize them on save? (to update the other instances of emacs?)
I know that the best solution is not to do this :), but it is hard to break old habbits :)
Cheers,
Stole
p.s I work on Linux systems
It sounds like the ultimate problem you want to solve is working with the common files across Emacs frames. Emacs allows multiple client frames for a single running instance of Emacs. Unless you have technical motivations for entirely isolated instances of Emacs (i.e. isolated global state) I would recommend using this feature. That way you entirely avoid issues arising from concurrent edits to files.
Start the Emacs server from the command line via:
$ emacs --daemon
Alternately you can start the server after emacs has started using M-x server-start.
Then you can create client frames as you need them. Instead of typing emacs -nw, use:
$ emacsclient -nw
Depending on how you work you may need to exit Emacs differently to preserve other clients. Use C-x 5 0 (delete-frame) to close a single client rather than C-x C-c (save-buffers-kill-terminal).
Start your emacs instance in background when your session starts and then use emacsclient -nw to open a new frame in each terminal session. It's not exactly what you're doing but it is the closest I can think of.
I'm using clojure-box on windows.
Because the Emacs is totally new thing for me, I got some trouble with using it.
Can I save the real code(without user>> and result, etc) from Emacs? it seems C-x C-s oversave many things..
how can I run the .clj script directly on Emacs? I'm from python so the way Idle running script is wonderful
(just press F5, then script is excuted, then continue the REPL with having variables, functions in the script)
Is there anyway to do thing easy like that?
yes! emacs has several ways to do this. check out the emacs starter kit
People tend not to save the REPL as a whole.It is more common to paste parts of it into a normal Clojure buffer and then hit control-c control-l to load the buffer into the REPL. This keeps the REPL in synk with the file/buffer and will also print any output your script generates.
there is much more to using emacs with Clojure than I can express in one answer though the emacs starter kit is, well, a good place to start.
After years of experimentation with editors, the fact is I prefer them as minimal as possible. I never use fancy features and the full-feature IDE's become bloated, heavy, and slow. Of course, when I do something that pretty much requires a specific IDE (like Android dev and Eclipse) I have no problems using it. But most of the time, I use gedit for programming.
However, I like many Emacs commands, and I want to use them occasionally. Is there a way to embed Emacs inside of gedit? For instance, I envision pressing alt-q (or whatever combo) and Emacs mode is enabled, and from then on all my key presses in the current tab do Emacs commands. I press alt-q again, and it turns off. This would allow me the best of both worlds. Anything like this exist, or do I need to write this plugin myself?
No.
I've seen discussion of embedding of Emacs in other applications in the past, and the consensus is that even that's not feasible, let alone what you're suggesting.
You'd be better off identifying what gedit does that makes you want to use it instead of Emacs, and extending Emacs to make it do that, too. (There can't be that much --- gedit doesn't do much.) The extra features can just sit there and wait for you, and you'll find it easier to locate and use them if you're comfortable in Emacs-mode already.
(On top of all the other advantages of Emacs, you gain the ability to use the same editor you use in a windowed environment on the terminal --- a huge advantage.)
Or maybe yes . . .
You can use the External Tools plugin of gedit (look for it in Preferences). Add a new command, bind it to the key you want, and use this script:
#!/bin/sh
FILE_NAME=$GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_PATH
emacs $FILE_NAME
If you want it to open in the currently-running Emacs, replace emacs with emacsclient, and add the following to your .emacs:
(server-start)
This is kind of backward. Why don't you just use Emacs and stay away from all the extra bells and whistles? It'd probably be easier to coax emacs to emulate gedit than the other way around.
If gedit (a) can be scripted to launch another application with the current file as an argument, and (b) will notice if the file is modified on disk and offer to reload it, then you would have a workaround.
Emacs is my editor of choice, and I use the cscope intergration xcscope.el provides. Recently I had a flirt with Vim. I decided to stay with Emacs, but one of the things I really liked in Vim was how I could control where my cscope windows should appear. Using cscope_maps.vim (http://cscope.sourceforge.net/cscope_maps.vim) I get shortcuts that let Vim open search results in the same buffer, a new horizontal or a new vertical split.
In Emacs a the cscope buffer just pops up in a window somewhere, according to some rules I don't know. My guess: A new window is opened if I have only one. If I have more, the one I've been away from for the longest time is used.
Pin Emacs buffers to windows (for cscope) is the only related topic I've found that helps a bit, but that doesn't make it near as flexible as the key bindings in Vim.
Anyone got a better cscope setup in Emacs than what xcscope.el provides? I don't know lisp, so I have no idea how hard it would be to make this work the way it does in Vim.
Emacs 24 (not yet released) changes radically how it is decided which buffers are displayed in which windows. In principle it should give you more fine-grained control. In any case, how you solve the problem for Emacs 24 will be different from how you solve it for older versions.
Consider filing an Emacs enhancement request to specifically get behavior more like what you had with Vim. To do that, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
I'm not sure if this is possible, but does anyone know if I can pipe ESS commands (i.e. evaluate region) to a R process running outside of Emacs? The Emacs terminal hangs up a bit (more often than Apple's terminal) and I'd like to just ditch it, while still using ESS commands. Currently I am doing the less efficient copy and paste technique :-)
Vince
Why not just kill the underlying R process, start a new one and continue the session in the same ESS buffer?
This doesn't answer your specific question and my experience is on Windows, but assuming it's challenging in ESS, I just mention:
There are other IDE's which have no trouble doing this (e.g. Tinn-R, StatET). In particular, for one supported on multiple operating systems, have a look at the StatET plugin for Eclipse. One very nice feature of Eclipse is that not only can you run the commands on a console outside the IDE, but you can also run multiple console sessions at the same time. This allows you to easily compare results side by side.
Needless to say, that's irrelevant if you're comfortable using ESS.