this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Emacs

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Minimal Emacs? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by moonsnotreal@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/emacs@lemmy.ml
 

I have been using vim for forever and I have dabbled in using emacs throughout the years. Emacs with the evil mode bindings is very comfortable, and I prefer org-mode over markdown (at least for the type of notes I do).

The main thing that stops me from using emacs though is how bloated it is. I don't want the games, web browser, email client, etc. Is there a way to remove those features from a standard install or from source?

Edit: I guess I'll stick with vim for now. It looks like Neovim might be more what I'm looking for instead of Emacs

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[–] jaredj@infosec.pub 4 points 1 year ago

I tried Emacs six times before liking it. The time it stuck was when I was editing some code in a language where the include/import statements almost matched the directory structure in the filesystem, but didn't. So, in Vim, I could cursor over an include statement, type gf... and not quite be able to instantly open up the included file. The way gf worked was that it was written in C as part of Vim, and to tell it where to look was a matter of configuration. But I needed a bit of code instead, to make up a couple of places in the filesystem to look on the fly, when I wanted to find-file-at-point (the Emacs term for Vim's gf functionality). Not only was find-file-at-point written in Elisp, but it already had a place where you could hook some custom code in, and documentation about how to do it. The documentation was available inside the editor (as you might expect from using Vim's :help), but it also had a link straight to the Elisp source. I was able to try out my function, change, and try again without restarting Emacs, and debug it step-by-step using edebug.

Anyway - have fun with Neovim. I hear it's spiffy. :)