Comments on: A GNU Emacs guy’s challenge to vi guys

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:19:15 +0000

Thank You

By: Mr. The Plague

Mr. The Plague — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 04:31:08 +0000

Personally, I find most of what you mention is easy to do from within emacs easier to do from outside. They’re different tools for a reason.

However, I make an exception for if I’m editing lisp code. m-x slime is really hot.

By: Diwaker

Diwaker — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 03:50:02 +0000

As others have said, none of these are “features” of text editors. They are more like plugins. Both emacs and vim have extensive plugin frameworks, and consequently all of the things you mention are doable in Vim. Just go to vim.org and search among the scripts. Here are a few examples:

- vcscommand.vim (http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=90) for version control
- clewn (http://clewn.sourceforge.net/) for integration with gdb, pida (http://pida.co.uk/) for integration with python debugger, vimDebug (http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=663) generic debugger integration
- dbext (http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=356) db access to 10 different databases

You get the idea.

By: Marius Gedminas

Marius Gedminas — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:11:10 +0000

s/www.vm.org/www.vim.org/

By: Marius Gedminas

Marius Gedminas — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:10:13 +0000

1) Editing remote files: there’s netrw (:help netrw), which you use by opening a url like :e scp://hostname/filename. I personally never use it, I find it more convenient to ssh and open the editor there. With ssh X forwarding all my vim sessions — local and remote, console and GUI — share the same X clipboard.

2) There are plugins for CVS/SVN. I use svncommand.vim by Adam Lazur (you can find it on http://www.vm.org). It add commands like :SVNAdd, :SVNAnnotate, SVNCommit, :SVNVimDiff (my favourite). I tend to commit from a different terminal, and svn ci spawns vim with two panes: one for reviewing the whole diff, the other for typing in the commit message.

I do not know if there’s a way to see a list of changed files, tag the ones you want to commit, and run commit on them from within vim. There may be, but I never bothered looking for it. It would be useful sometimes, though.

3) Vim’s diff support is pretty nice (up to five windows, with synchronized scrolling, showing of diffs within each line, folding places that do not differ, editing, moving chunks left and right). :help diff. There is no support for diffing directory trees. (Or, if there is, I haven’t discovered it yet.)

4) Using databases or other kinds of shells: no. Vim doesn’t have a good terminal emulator, and it doesn’t support embedding external programs in its buffers. You can probably write some script to emulate that, but I haven’t seen anything yet. I usually find it easier to have an xterm open next to my gvim window.

5) Integrated debugging: I haven’t seen this working with vim yet.

By: Amaranth

Amaranth — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:09:36 +0000

I think this comes down to what the two are supposed to be used for. Vi(m) is a pretty good text editor, emacs is an OS with a decent text editor in it. No flames intended. It’s just that emacs is more of an IDE-like thing.

By: Rocco Stanzione

Rocco Stanzione — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:53:00 +0000

You may have heard the quip, “Emacs is a nice operating system, but I prefer Linux.” All the features you mention are nice, but none of them are text editing features. Many of them are nice in an IDE, which vim isn’t. I edit remote files by mounting remote filesystems or running the editor remotely. I use revision control systems for revision controll, diff tools for diff management, database tools for database queries, debuggers for debugging, and vim for editing text. In that regard, vim isn’t a direct competitor to emacs. They’re both quite handy (I assume) for editing text. If you want your text editor to handle a lot more than editing text, emacs is probably for you.

By: John Quigley

John Quigley — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:01:09 +0000

With respect to my conclusion above. Excuse me for not making this more obvious, but that was in no way directed at you or the parent post.

It was my attempt to prevent any debate regarding which editor is better in follow-up posts.

I’ll direct you to some vim information so that you can understand how to accomplish these things in vim. Stay tuned.

- John Quigley

By: manchicken

manchicken — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:53:21 +0000

I’ll agree. This post isn’t anything to belittle vim users. It’s entirely to get answers to my questions. I’m still trying to get these answers ^_^

By: John Quigley

John Quigley — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:54:25 +0000

I’m going to be succinct here. In vim, there are faculties readily available to perform three of your points, namely the inline and robust support for revision control, diff and debugging. The other two points may be possible, but I’ve never looked into it. I won’t detail how these are performed in vim; if you’re interested, information is easily accessible via the in-editor help system.

One thing that you must bear in mind is that vim comes from an entirely different background than does emacs. Vim was written by a systems guy, who strictly adhered to the ‘do one thing and do it well’ mantra of the UNIX world. Thus, if you want to edit files external to your machine, set up SSHFS or NTFS, both of which are much more powerful facilities than emacs tramp.

I know how to use both editors, and regularly use the two for various purposes. For me, vim is the clear winner (for most purposes), largely because the key ‘chords’ are intuitive and I can edit, and move about within, a file much faster than I ever could in emacs. This largely has to do with the fact that most commands are a single key press. A single press may not seem much, but taking the speed with which I type, and the sheer volume of words I type per day, it very quickly adds up.

People who engage in debates about which editor are better almost always have the following characteristics:

1) ignorant about usage of one or the other
2) too much time on their hands

- John Quigley