Emacs

I am a text editor window shopper extraordinaire. With as much time as I spend either hacking config files or writing text, having a good editor in my toolbelt is a must. I'll download pretty much any new one that has any promise, just to give it a shot. Sometimes, against my better judgment.

I downloaded Carbon Emacs to give it a looksee. A 39.1 MB dmg file. I didn't get around to checking it out until today, when I realized it expands to a 184.9 MB Emacs.app bundle. Got it copied to my Applications folder and started it up.

Once again, like every other time I think to try out Emacs, I hit random keys, perused the help file, realized I didn't feel like going through the learning curve just to edit text, and gave up. This time, however, I stuck around long enough to play Tetris for a while. Did you know you can play Tetris in your text editor? You can if it's Emacs. Check under the "Tools" menu, at the bottom -- you'll find like 10 games to play.

So I trashed Emacs.app. Feeling better. What's the old saying? "Emacs is a nice operating system. The only thing it lacks is a good editor." The "nice" part is arguable, too. ;) However, this is no commentary on Carbon Emacs itself -- it seems a well-enough-done port.

I'm rather astounded by the size of the app bundle, but there is a lot more going on inside than just a text editor. And that's rather the problem.

More on this subject at the expanded version of this article on O'Reilly.

But wait! There's more!

Re-revisiting emacs In which our hero turns back toward the feared emacs and re-evaluates his previous utterance. Could we have a defection on our hands?!