emacs Vs Eclipse?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Emacs could definitely do with being easier to use.

Hardly. Emacs is phenomenally easy to use. It's just difficult to
learn how to use.

Eclipse does win here, although it insists on trying to import your
java into a "project structure". Thanks, I already have one of these!

I can do without my tools dictating my development processes to me, thank
you very much! [No, I've not yet tried Eclipse.]

 

[Yakov]

The OP is a troll and it won't get us anywhere.
Let's just stop this thread

Regards,
Yakov Fain

 

[blmblm]

Hardly. Emacs is phenomenally easy to use. It's just difficult to
learn how to use.

And this is an important distinction to make!

There are plenty of tools (emacs being one) that are not particularly
novice-friendly, but are quite expert-friendly. (To paraphrase the
old joke about Unix, emacs *is* user-friendly -- it's just choosy about
its friends.)

 

[Oliver Scholz]

And this is an important distinction to make!

There are plenty of tools (emacs being one) that are not particularly
novice-friendly, but are quite expert-friendly. (To paraphrase the
old joke about Unix, emacs *is* user-friendly -- it's just choosy about
its friends.)

[...]

I am personally not that convinced that this distinction is that
important. I agree that it might become important, if it should
happen that making some functionality more friendly to beginners would
also make it more tedious to use in the long run. That would be bad
UI design.

But I do think that Emacs could see waste improvements here, without
sacrificing the benefits of the interface it currently provides.
Assistants ("wizards") could be one such improvement for
customization. A better GUI (-framework) than a meagre toolbar and an
unwieldy menu another one.

Oliver

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

Eclipse does win here, although it insists on trying to import your
java into a "project structure". Thanks, I already have one of these!

I can do without my tools dictating my development processes to me, thank
you very much! [No, I've not yet tried Eclipse.]

Eclipse doesn't dictate anything, and I can only imagine that Phillip did
not understand the flexibility that it offers in that regard. The only
requirement is that everything that is part of a project must be in one
directory subtree, except for code (which can be in another eclipse project
that the current one depends on).

 

[Madhusudan Singh]

Hello everyone,
Is there a discussion on emacs vs eclipse? Are there any advantages of
emacs over eclipse?

I'm a grad student and I've been using emacs for over 6 years ( it was
the first thing I ever tried and it worked for me). Recently, I had to
"take over" a project and improve it. I didn't have the
design/documentation. The only thing I had was the code ( about 500
java files, 55 packages and 112kloc) developed over 5 years (yes, it
is a research project).

Using eclipse helped me quickly understand the code. Eclipse helped me
efficiently search/navigate between files and methods. I found the
eclipse ide to be more powerful than the emacs-ide
(http://jdee.sunsite.dk/).

Given that eclipse has plugins for C/Java/Latex and runs on Linux/Win,
I don't see a reason why I should stick with emacs.

I would like to know why emacs-users (who have also tried eclipse) are
still sticking with emacs ?

An Eclipse Convert.

I use LaTeX (with AucTeX+RefTeX+beamer), Fortran 77/90/95, some C/C++,
gnuplot, gri, (and sometimes, perl, html, php, python) etc. for different
parts of my work.

Emacs is the only thing that works for all of the above. I do not have to
learn new ways of doing things each time I shift to a different part of my
work. If you are an exclusive Java programmer, and you find eclipse good
for your work, more power to you

 

[blmblm]

And this is an important distinction to make!

There are plenty of tools (emacs being one) that are not particularly
novice-friendly, but are quite expert-friendly. (To paraphrase the
old joke about Unix, emacs *is* user-friendly -- it's just choosy about
its friends.)

[...]

I am personally not that convinced that this distinction is that
important. I agree that it might become important, if it should
happen that making some functionality more friendly to beginners would
also make it more tedious to use in the long run. That would be bad
UI design.

My point, I think, was that if "user-friendly" is taken to mean only
"novice-friendly", one is apt to end up with something that is,
perhaps inadvertently, not very expert-friendly.

But I do think that Emacs could see waste improvements here, without
sacrificing the benefits of the interface it currently provides.
Assistants ("wizards") could be one such improvement for
customization. A better GUI (-framework) than a meagre toolbar and an
unwieldy menu another one.

Could be. I'm not sure "novice-friendly" and "expert-friendly"
are completely compatible (is a toolbar a helpful thing to have or
a waste of screen real estate?), but they're probably not mutually
exclusive either ....

 

[Bent C Dalager]

I am personally not that convinced that this distinction is that
important. I agree that it might become important, if it should
happen that making some functionality more friendly to beginners would
also make it more tedious to use in the long run. That would be bad
UI design.

In a way, this situation is relatively common in modern GUI design (or
really GUI use). You'll have some useful feature or other on the
"Tools/Macro/Record" menu and people will learn to use the mouse to
click these menus to get to that functionality. Now, you'd think that
adult, thinking people who use the feature a lot would learn the
semi-handy keyboard shortcut for it (Alt-T + M + R) but in my
experience, they don't. They keep insisting on using the slow,
laborious method rather than realize there is a faster way of doing
it. The net effect tends to be to decrease effeciency and increase
frustration.

You probably can't blame the GUI designer too much for this though.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Ulrich M. Schwarz]

(e-mail address removed) (Bent C Dalager) writes:

[People don't switch from buttons to keyboard commands]

You probably can't blame the GUI designer too much for this though.

Well, with buttons, it's hard since they usually don't have the
keyboard shortcuts next to them. I think the Emacs way is a very nice
feature: "You can also run this with Meta-Alt-Cokebottle". I'm not
aware other GUIs do this, even though technically "that can't be hard
to do" (Famous last words, I know. It'd probably add another
indirection layer.).

Ulrich

[F'up: c.e]

 

[Galen Boyer]

In a way, this situation is relatively common in modern GUI
design (or really GUI use). You'll have some useful feature or
other on the "Tools/Macro/Record" menu and people will learn to
use the mouse to click these menus to get to that
functionality. Now, you'd think that adult, thinking people who
use the feature a lot would learn the semi-handy keyboard
shortcut for it (Alt-T + M + R) but in my experience, they
don't. They keep insisting on using the slow, laborious method
rather than realize there is a faster way of doing it. The net
effect tends to be to decrease effeciency and increase
frustration.

You probably can't blame the GUI designer too much for this
though.

Yes you can. The GUI designers of today only consider the mouse
the interface. If they considered the keyboard the main
interface, we'd have windowy applications which users used only
the keyboard to navigate. How many applications can actually be
effectively navigated exclusively with the keyboard?

It is the fault of the designer of the application that they
consider the keyboard as an afterthought. Emacs authors took
great pains in making sure both mouse and keyboard are very
useful interfaces.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

Yes you can. The GUI designers of today only consider the mouse
the interface.

This is only an issue if they do not provide any sort of keyboard
shortcut. In my experience, they mostly do provide the menu mnemonics
so that using an mnemonic path start with Alt-something tends to be
feasible. In practice, the resultant keyboard sequence isn't much
longer than most emacs shortcuts.

If they considered the keyboard the main
interface, we'd have windowy applications which users used only
the keyboard to navigate. How many applications can actually be
effectively navigated exclusively with the keyboard?

I'd say most professional ones can, even if only by using the standard
menubar shortcuts. I can't remember the last time I used a
professional Windows application, at least, in which I couldn't
navigate effectively with the keyboard.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Galen Boyer]

This is only an issue if they do not provide any sort of
keyboard shortcut. In my experience, they mostly do provide the
menu mnemonics so that using an mnemonic path start with
Alt-something tends to be feasible. In practice, the resultant
keyboard sequence isn't much longer than most emacs shortcuts.

But nobody I've seen uses the keyboards to navigate because the
keystrokes are either too cumbersome or to hard to remember.
Emacs made sure neither happened and because of that, Emacs users
actually "use" the keyboard.

Just because an application "offers" keyboard shortcuts doesn't
mean it has good ones.

I'd say most professional ones can, even if only by using the
standard menubar shortcuts. I can't remember the last time I
used a professional Windows application, at least, in which I
couldn't navigate effectively with the keyboard.

I've tried numerous times on windows and it is just plain
painful. I've used eclipse alot and the keyboard isn't jumping
out at me. I certainly navigate the panes with the mouse.

 

[Phillip Lord]

Bent> This is only an issue if they do not provide any sort of
Bent> keyboard shortcut. In my experience, they mostly do provide
Bent> the menu mnemonics so that using an mnemonic path start with
Bent> Alt-something tends to be feasible. In practice, the resultant
Bent> keyboard sequence isn't much longer than most emacs shortcuts.

Quite a few applications do not enable you to navigate to all
functionality from the keyboard. However the accessibility legislation
is making this less of an issue as time goes on.

Bent> I'd say most professional ones can, even if only by using the
Bent> standard menubar shortcuts. I can't remember the last time I
Bent> used a professional Windows application, at least, in which I
Bent> couldn't navigate effectively with the keyboard.

I think this is true. The advantage that Emacs has over most windows
systems is that it helps you to migrate between menus and
keyboard. The menus are better for rarely used commands. But ever time
you use the menu, emacs tells you the keychord which would have
achieved the same end. As you start to use a given menu item
repeatedly, you move toward using the keyboard.

Also Emacs has facilities which work through the keyboard alone. Tools
like ido.el, are fantastically fast. You rarely see this in "GUI
first" tools.

Cheers

Phil

 

[Dale King]

Do I understand correctly that you have both an rt.jar and
documentation for a '1.0' Java?

There was no such thing as Java 1.0.4. The initial version of Java (which is
where I started) was 1.0.2. The next version was 1.1. Perhaps Sudsy meant
1.1.4

 

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

There was no such thing as Java 1.0.4. The initial version of Java (which is
where I started) was 1.0.2. The next version was 1.1. Perhaps Sudsy meant
1.1.4

1.1.4 still used the "classes.zip" naming; The split into rt.jar and
tools.jar didn't happen until 1.2.0.

 

[Will Hartung]

I'd say most professional ones can, even if only by using the standard
menubar shortcuts. I can't remember the last time I used a
professional Windows application, at least, in which I couldn't
navigate effectively with the keyboard.

You can navigate Excel with a keyboard? That's a neet trick. Could share the
cheat sheet? How can I edit a cell in Excel from the keyboard? How do I
switch tabs? I'm not saying it's can't be done, I simply don't know how to
do it. I can replace cell contents (just by typing), but enter, alt-enter,
ctrl-alt-enter, Esc, Tab, none of these put me in "edit mode" on a cell.

Just curious.

Regards,

Will Hartung
([email protected])

 

[Will Hartung]

Also Emacs has facilities which work through the keyboard alone. Tools
like ido.el, are fantastically fast. You rarely see this in "GUI
first" tools.

Oooh...that ido.el looks very yummy. I'll have to try that out. Thx!

Regards,

Will Hartung
([email protected])

 

[Galen Boyer]

You can navigate Excel with a keyboard?

Fairly well for when I've used it.

That's a neet trick. Could share the cheat sheet? How can I
edit a cell in Excel from the keyboard?
F2.

How do I switch tabs?

Ctrl-PageDown Ctrl-PageUp

I'm not saying it's can't be done, I simply don't know how to
do it. I can replace cell contents (just by typing), but enter,
alt-enter, ctrl-alt-enter, Esc, Tab, none of these put me in
"edit mode" on a cell.

Try that F2 key.

 

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

You can navigate Excel with a keyboard? That's a neet trick. Could share the
cheat sheet? How can I edit a cell in Excel from the keyboard?

F2, like with many other Microsoft programs, e.g. Explorer.

How do I switch tabs?

I seem to recall you can navigate to the tabs using Ctrl+Tab, then
swich using left + right.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

You have an install for it? I would like to support 1.0
in the On-Line Compiler (more for historical interest than
anything else).

1.1.4 still used the "classes.zip" naming;

You must be referring to Sun's 1.1.4 which I have never
used personally (started coding Java with 1.1.8) whereas
the MS 1.1.4 is an interesting beast.

It comprised 6 separate .ZIP files (one release had 7),
coming to around 5 Meg. The Sun classes were all in a single
zip, along with some MS classes, and I have yet to see an
installation where the names of these ZIP files match.

--
Andrew Thompson
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