Irreal

Marcin Borkowski (mbork) has a short list of Emacs configuration tips that you may find useful. All of these are documented, of course, but it can be notoriously hard to dig out information of this type.

For example, one tip that I find immediately useful is the configuration to inhibit AUCTeX from asking if I want to save my current TeX file before executing whatever command 【Ctrl+c Ctrl+c】 will execute. Of course I want to save the file; the command will likely not do what I want otherwise. A simple configuration change will just save it automatically without bothering you.

Most of you will know some or all of these tips already but it’s worth scanning the list to see if there’s something new you can use.

A year ago, Bailey Ling was a Vim user. Like many of us, he switched to Emacs and now he’s giving a progress report. Many of Ling’s long-held work flows have become victim to Emacs. For example, he used to use tmux to handle multiple sessions with Vim. As an Emacs user that is no longer necessary. He’s got other examples so be sure to read his post.

Like many who make the trip from Vim to Emacs, Ling started off using evil-mode but found that he could be more efficient by learning the native Emacs key bindings. He still uses evil-mode for editing text but turns it off for everything else. That seems like a reasonably compromise but I’m still glad I just jumped in and learned the Emacs key bindings. As I’ve written before, my muscle memory still has flashbacks to Vim key strokes with, often, hilarious results. Trying to cope with two sets of key strokes would likely render me about as efficient as I would be with ed.

As with almost every Emacs user, Ling started moving more and more of his work flow into Emacs. He, like me, loves how you can make a tweak to Emacs and evaluate it on the spot without restarting Emacs. He’s found, as many of us have, that Emacs is a way of life.

If you’re a convert from Vim, give his post a read; I’m sure it will resonate. Even if you aren’t a convert, you may find his experiences interesting.

The infamous Word versus LaTex paper that I wrote about previously has taken on a new life as a gag. Every instance of “Word” in the paper was replaced with “Emacs” and every instance of “LaTex” was replaced with “Vim.” All the links were changed to point to a page of Hahahas. The result was a fake PLOS ONE paper purporting to show that Emacs users were more efficient than Vim users.

The most amusing thing about the joke was how successful it was. A number of Emacs users pointed to it with glee as proof of Emacs’ superiority. Emacs is superior, of course, but as much as we Emacs lovers might wish it otherwise, a competent Vim user is going to be more efficient at editing text than an equally competent Emacs user. The reason for that is that Vi/Vim commands are composable.

I maintain my belief that Emacs users are more productive overall than Vim users but many near and dear to me disagree. The best lesson to draw from the joke is that the Emacs versus Vim debate’s status as a holy war is affirmed. Why else would so many people be ready—eager—to believe an obviously fake paper?