Andrew Coppin writes:
Personally, I really hate text-mode editors. (I won't even go into how many times I've had to reboot Linux just to get *out* of Vi!)
'Z Z' is the command to quit vi, right?
Sometimes. Sometimes it just types "zz" in the document. It depends on the alignment of the planets.
Ah, then you're in the wrong mode. Press ESC first.
It's a text-mode editor.
With graphical support.
quod erat demonstrandum.
Please don't be so quick to jump to conclusions like that.
Since it only operates in text-mode, it cannot possibly provide things like clickable fold points,
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CategoryOutline I'm not sure any of those supply _clickable_ points, but there's no reason in principle it couldn't be done. Emacs users just feel that using the keyboard is quicker.
or a side-bar containing a bunch of icons representing the objects in the current file,
Speedbar: http://cedet.sourceforge.net/speedbar.shtml http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/SpeedBar http://cedet.sourceforge.net/speedbar-multi-2.jpg -- screenshot http://jdee.sunsite.dk/jdedoc/html/jde-ug/images/speedbar1.gif -- screenshot Not sure about integration with haskell-mode, but there's no reason this couldn't be done in Emacs.
or a spell checker,
Flyspell: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/FlySpell http://prog.vub.ac.be/~cderoove/geekery/emacslatex/flyspell_menu.png -- screenshot
or an interactive debugger,
As previously mentioned, debugging in Haskell hasn't really reached maturity yet, but there's an Emacs interface to gdb: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/GdbMode http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob/gdb-ui.png -- screenshot
or any of those other features that require a GUI.
Perhaps you ought to revise your opinions on what constitutes a GUI. (By the way, all those screenshots above show Emacs with horrible fonts that haven't been anti-aliased. By checking out the unicode-2 branch of Emacs, which will be merged into the trunk before Emacs 23, you can easily get XFT support. I wouldn't live without it.) -- -David House, dmhouse@gmail.com