peterv writes:
But people, emacs is sooooo weird for a Windows user...
Yes, there's no denying this.
For example, ALL windows (and motif?) programs use CTRL-Z for undo. But not emacs... So after some googling, I found and installed CUA, to get more Windows compliant keys. CTRL-Z does undo, woohoo!
My personal recommendation is that as soon as you're familiar with Emacs, turn off CUA mode. It shouldn't take too long to retrain your brain to use the new shortcuts, and with CUA mode you can't really use Emacs to its full potential.
But CTRL-Y doesn't do redo yet, as in ALL windows programs.
Emacs uses a different (and more powerful) undo model to everyone else. The 'Undo' section of the Emacs tour [1] explains this well. [1]: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/
Select a block, press delete. ALL Windows text editors will delete the block, but not emacs, it just deselects the block and deletes the current character.
Place (delete-selection-mode 1) in your .emacs.
I also couldn't get the auto indentation working, not sure why, I thought that pressing ENTER would automatically indent my code, especially when I end my line with $. Pressing TAB will not insert a TAB, like in ALL Windows editors.
It's more traditional in Emacs to use TAB to indent code, and Enter (aka RET in Emacs circles) just creates a newline. You can use C-j to perform a newline and indent. Make sure you read up on how indentation works in haskell-mode, though, otherwise you'll confuse yourself. The Haskell wiki page for haskell-mode [2] would be a good place to start. [2]: http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_mode_for_Emacs#Indentation
But I have no interest in learning emacs, I just want to learn Haskell without having to perform too much manual text editing that one does not expect to do in the 21st century :)
You will have to learn Emacs in order to use Emacs. But once you do, you'll never go back. That's my experience at least.
No pun intended; I know Emacs is an incredible system (I used to work with it on OS/2, and if I recall correctly, I could even read my email right inside of it, heck it could even make me lispy breakfast! ;), but it's just so... alien, at least when looking at it from a Windows perspective.
In fact I read your mail and am reponding using the excellent VM [3], a mail reader for Emacs :) [3]: http://www.wonderworks.com/vm/
And that's why IMHO for Windows users, one needs a friendly IDE to get started with Haskell in a modern way. And the Windows version should comply to the Windows styleguides. Haskell is such a nice language, it should reach a larger audience, and just like Concurrent Clean, that could be done by providing a simple IDE.
Emacs isn't a Windows editor, that's for certain. However, that doesn't mean it isn't worth sticking with.
Phew, my frustration leaked into this email, but at least now I got rid of it, sorry guys ;)
It's the same frustration I felt when I was looking for a good Haskell IDE. I really didn't want to try Emacs because I was under the impression that it would be arcane and impossible to learn. But it's the most powerful editor around today, and let me tell you, if you can learn Haskell, you can certainly learn Emacs :) -- -David House, dmhouse@gmail.com