Of all Emacs features and possible ways to use, what were some of the hardest things to learn or get used to?
cross post from reddit, OP: @pizzatorque@mastodon.social
Personally mine was just getting around buffers; creating new ones, splitting windows, deleting the ones I don’t need and so on. In the beginning I used to have just a single file open at a time like nano
Where the hell is the "meta" key and why does every command tutorial online talk about it.
Remnant of the type of keyboard that Emacs was developed on. Also the same place that the Super, Hyper, and Compose keys originate from
You can map it through your X server/Wayland compositor, but if not Emacs recognizes Alt and Esc as valid meta keys
I also moved from evil mode to meow a year or so back, which was sort of a big change for me:
Definitely display-buffer-alist for me. I was using purpose-mode for the longest time but I think I finally managed to get display-buffer-alist working mostly how I want.
Mind to share it?
At the moment I think I only have the magit-status in the same biffer.
It took me a while to think in lisp.
Thame.
You don't usually split buffers, maybe windows?
ah yes an oopsie on my end :p
isn't it Frames in Emacs context?
not that i use or need it often, but terminology is (obviously) not that easy
Keyboard macros.
keyboard macros are so good, and using consult to go through old ones is great UX.
I can never remember the kmacro ring commands so I used to just redo everything.
Oh, I agree. I just never remember to use them until I'm done and realize I could have used a macro.
Yeah, clearly the emacs concept of windows is older (or they'd be called panes or something)
@crmsnbleyd
Do/undo/redo as a non-linear construct broke my brain more than a little. Even after all this time it's still somewhat cryptic. Packages like `vundo' have been indispensable for visualizing the decidedly non-linear, non-circular, zig-zag of previous do, undo, and redo.
i just use undo-fu, maybe I should try using the vanilla undo
@crmsnbleyd
I tend to use undo-fu more often for sure. Typically the simpler word processor style of managing things is all I need, and for code there's version control.
Honestly I'd say if you're happy with undo-fu there's no real reason to go back. Unless you're curious and want to explore, which I'd never discourage either!
