emacs?

[BJH]

Hello all,

I have recently resurrected my A1200 setup and I'd like to do some programming on it.

I use LINUX full time and emacs is my editor of choice. So I decided to see if it would be possible to install an emacs environment on the AMIGA.

I'm aware there's a memacs port but while browsing aminet I found there's a version 20.3 of emacs proper from 1999.

Ok... would this be any good? I looked through the documentation and it seems to me like this package will be quite a job to install. So before I bother going to the trouble I wanted to find out what it's like. I googled around for information about emacs installations on the AMIGA hoping to find other people who have installed it and are using it. But I turned up pretty much zip.

So, my question:

Do any programmers on this board use emacs on the AMIGA? Are you using the 20.3 version off aminet? What's it like?

[Pat the Cat]

I quite like it but it's not Cygnus Ed.

I suggest you give it a try - depends how clunky you can tolerate your dev environment.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Pat the Cat

I quite like it but it's not Cygnus Ed.

Indeed, it's probably a million times as powerful as CygnusEd

[Pat the Cat]

Fair point, some people want "just" a text editor for moving a cursor around a screen. A WYSIWYG word processor that's just for text.

Dev tool desires are hugely personal.

Sometimes those personal reasons have solid foundations, sometimes they're spurious, and there isn't a "right" answer.

There are multiple right answers.

[BJH]

Thanks for the replies all.

Got it running. Not sure how useful this old version will turn out to be, but we'll see!
I'll check out CygnusEd too. It might be that this is a better choice for the AMIGA platform.

It's true, some people have quite strong opinions about what makes for a great text editor. Bizarrely, on the opposite end of the scale, there are people who literally don't care which text editor they use.

I fall on the "strong opinions" end of the spectrum, and I'd argue the case for emacs. And, now that I've invested so heavily into it, I'd probably not consider another text editor (to use as my main editor of choice). I only use something else if it's because I have to

[Locutus]

I'm a heavy Emacs user myself (...for everything, its not a text editor its a runtime for a single user LISP machine)

Anyway, the ancient port of Emacs20.3 has a true AmigaOS Intuition UI and comes with all the stuff you would expect from that era. Which means a million things you expect for granted are missing.

I do use Emacs20.3 on Amiga from time to time and its fine, installing it is rather easy if you have a proper ixemul/Geekgadgets setup (unix userland for AmigaOS, think cygwin/msys style)

Start out with this package and work from there: http://aminet.net/package/dev/gg/GG-Lite-bin-m68k

Porting a later Emacs back to AmigaOS would be quite a undertaking, the old 68k ports need to do some magic with the magic of the elisp memory management to work.

A more fun exercise might be porting muemacs or mg and amiga-fy it.

CygnusEd? If you come from Unix/Emacs world its not going to make you happy, at all. Amiga editors are all rather inflexible and simple.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Amiga editors are all rather inflexible and simple.

Except for FrexxEd which is extremely powerful because of it's scripting system (which is 99% C). The out of the box configuration is quite bad, however, and I've spent a lot of time improving it. In terms of power nothing in Amiga land comes close.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by BJH

'll check out CygnusEd too. It might be that this is a better choice for the AMIGA platform.

Not when you want the power of emacs. CygnusEd simply doesn't provide that and is extremely basic compared to emacs.

Originally Posted by BJH

It's true, some people have quite strong opinions about what makes for a great text editor.

It depends on how you like to work. People should just pick the text editor that suits their way of working best, and be done with it. Similar to spaces vs tabs. Just use what you like.

Originally Posted by BJH

I fall on the "strong opinions" end of the spectrum, and I'd argue the case for emacs.

If you like emacs, then you like emacs. If you want a similar level of power on the Amiga without using emacs, there's really only FrexxEd, and that conforms to the 'standard' editor model, like Notepad++, the Visual Studio Editor, CygnusEd and most other editors. Granted, FrexxEd can probably (maybe, perhaps) be set up to work like emacs, but it will be quite a job.

[Locutus]

I do kinda wonder if a Tramp setup would be workable for editing on Amiga?