The SI prefix thing stems from a joke anyway. Allow me to trot out the etymology again:
Once upon a time in the 1980s, there was created a program for reading ELectronic Mail called Elm.
Someone created a rival mail reader called Pine, which followed both the tree pun as well as the fact it was a recursive acronym: “Pine is not Elm”.
Pine had an editor called the Pine Composer or Pico for short. Pico is both a typographical term as well as an SI unit. They may have been going for both. Too perfect a pun to pass up, perhaps.
Due to licensing uncertainty, someone else created a from-scratch clone of Pico called Nano, cementing the continuation of puns, but in the SI direction.
And then apparently someone else has decided to get on the bandwagon with Micro.
I don’t know how Micro works, and I don’t actually use emacs day to day, but as I understand it emacs works a bit like:
When you press a key in emacs it invokes a Lisp function that takes as arguments the text buffer that has focus, the parameters of the ‘window’ into that buffer, and the cursor position in that window.
This is the case for any key you press in any context, even for typing normal letters.
A ‘mode’ in emacs is a set of bindings which associate specific keys with specific functions.
‘modes’ can be stacked on top of each other, with higher modes being able to intercept key presses before they reach lower modes, and changes / manipulate lower modes (I think?)
All of the editor’s functionality, such as ‘search’ or ‘undo’, is implemented in that way.
All of this is completely customizable, so pressing a key combo can be made to do virtually anything or manipulate the rest of the editor’s systems in any way.
A ‘mode’ in emacs is a set of bindings which associate specific keys with specific functions.
Not quite, a mode is basically a lisp function defined with a different macro that integrates it into the various systems (like showing up in the modeline when active). It can do basically anything, including setting keybinds.
‘modes’ can be stacked on top of each other, with higher modes being able to intercept key presses before they reach lower modes, and changes / manipulate lower modes (I think?)
No, a keybind can only run one function and what that function is is whatever last defined a binding for that key. Like, if one mode defines a key to be something and you activate another that also binds that key, the latter takes over.
Just give me nano, I can’t be bothered to fuck with emacs or vim.
use micro, it’s 1000x better
Thanks, I’ll check it out
Edit: did I just fall for an si prefix joke?
The SI prefix thing stems from a joke anyway. Allow me to trot out the etymology again:
Once upon a time in the 1980s, there was created a program for reading ELectronic Mail called Elm.
Someone created a rival mail reader called Pine, which followed both the tree pun as well as the fact it was a recursive acronym: “Pine is not Elm”.
Pine had an editor called the Pine Composer or Pico for short. Pico is both a typographical term as well as an SI unit. They may have been going for both. Too perfect a pun to pass up, perhaps.
Due to licensing uncertainty, someone else created a from-scratch clone of Pico called Nano, cementing the continuation of puns, but in the SI direction.
And then apparently someone else has decided to get on the bandwagon with Micro.
There’s a similar trend in the emulator world, it’s great. Usually a result of forks though: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
It’s a joke, but it’s a real editor
yes, but actually no
At the risk of invoking the ire of two communities, why shouldn’t we think of Micro as Emacs but with Lua instead of Lisp?
I don’t know how Micro works, and I don’t actually use emacs day to day, but as I understand it emacs works a bit like:
Does Micro work anything like that?
Not quite, a mode is basically a lisp function defined with a different macro that integrates it into the various systems (like showing up in the modeline when active). It can do basically anything, including setting keybinds.
No, a keybind can only run one function and what that function is is whatever last defined a binding for that key. Like, if one mode defines a key to be something and you activate another that also binds that key, the latter takes over.
Emacs does have something like you describe, where functions can be ‘advised’.
I see
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One thing that irks me a lot is that you save in nano with ^O why!? How does O relates to saving?
I want push my updates from volatile memory out to long term storage.
I always saw the O as output.
I just save ny exiting ctrl+x
It makes the previous version obsolete
Yeah, that is probably my biggest gripe with nano as well.
On one hand autocompletion is nice when I want to use a language instead of learning it.
On the other hand I am in the middle of my learning phase.