Emacs is insane

So here I was minding my own business, cranking out some code for about an hour. Then suddenly, emacs decides to change how many spaces my tab is. Goes from 2 to 6 for no reason and I can't fix it :( So it's either don't use tabs anymore, or have the formatting of my code change halfway through this file -_-
You know what they say... "An emacs user and his tabs are soon parted."
closed account (1yR4jE8b)
Always convert tabs to spaces.
+1 darkestfright.

Tabs are stupid.
> Always convert tabs to spaces.
iirc, that's the problem, emacs decided halfway to change the equivalence.
But if you just use tabs, there is never a problem.
closed account (1yR4jE8b)
Or you could just use an editor that isn't a buggy piece of crap. Emacs is a decent operating system, but the default editor sucks.
It was just the first editor I got for my Linux machine. I'm not particularly found of using vi/m. Any other suggestions for editor?
Are you allowed to use a GUI? If so, I really like gedit.
closed account (1yR4jE8b)
Kate or Sublime Text 2.
I'm not aware of any editor (for C++) that can beat recent versions of C::B (Eclipse CDT can, but only in some specific scenarios - for example, it is able to deduce the type of a variable when using auto). As a general purpose editor that works for many different languages, Geany is great.
I might just pick up C::B for Linux. I was trying to avoid a full blown IDE as I really just want a text editor, but I do love how C::B's text editor works.
I always find claims that software like Emacs just "decided" to do something you didn't want all on its own somewhat suspect. It is far, far more likely that you managed to tickle the beast with the right combination of keystrokes to cause it to happen.

Mind you, I can't stand Emacs. The first time I loaded it up I went too quickly past the "4 newbies" screens, which was unwise, especially since I was at a tty, and I think I nearly deleted the hard drive before having to ask someone to get me out of it.

Of course, it turns out that I hadn't missed anything important in the introduction screens, I just didn't understand that wonky C-X notation, which every other place since before Emacs would write as ^X. (These days it is written as Ctrl-X).

I love my WordStar command set. I still use Delphi 5 to edit everything. (Well, nearly.)
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I always find claims that software like Emacs just "decided" to do something you didn't want all on its own somewhat suspect


Chances are you're correct. But I have no idea what I did. I didn't make any changes. I just hit return, tab, then bam. Suddenly my tabs are 3x as large. It seems as if it was confused on auto-formatting and thought my brace didn't end, when it fact it did. Anywho, I'm currently using Gedit until I set up C::B.
IIRC, Emacs has some stateful keymappings that can catch you.

In any case, I find NEdit to be pretty nice, if you want to give it a look.
http://www.nedit.org/
Or you could just use an editor that isn't a buggy piece of crap.

I've been using Emacs for years and I've never run into a bug. It does exactly what you tell it to do: the only problem is that people frequently unintentionally tell it to do something they didn't want to. I strongly recommend sticking with it, the time you invest in learning it pays off immensely once you've summited the learning curve. The fact that most modern day IDEs force you to edit text like you're in Notepad is appalling: Emacs is the way to go.
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ascii wrote:
The fact that most modern day IDEs force you to edit text like you're in Notepad is appalling...

This.

I still don't personally like Emacs, but modern text editors are usually stupid.

I call Notepad-esque editors "dumb windows editors" (this includes non-Windows things like gedit and kate). Hence the reason I like my D5 so much.
closed account (1yR4jE8b)
Most modern IDEs have a VIM or Emacs mode that you can enable in the options -- or have some kind of extension to add the functionality. I use VsVim in Visual Studio on a daily basis.
Most modern IDEs have a VIM or Emacs mode that you can enable in the options -- or have some kind of extension to add the functionality.

The only IDE I've ever used that had anything like this was QtCreator (it had a Vi mode built in), but maybe there are similar addons for other IDEs (or maybe I just didn't look through the options thoroughly enough). You still lose elisp and vimscript, but if you don't want to be "building" your IDE from scratch, extensions seem like an easier alternative.
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