On 2026-02-06 11:00, [email protected] wrote:
Aside: I tried Emacs quite some time ago (ca. 2000 - 2002) and found it
very difficult to get into and eventually abandoned it. I had come from
the Windows world and was used to WYSIWG editors and word processors
(e.g., Word).
My Emacs config has outgrown some software projects I'm on. org mode and
org roam are the main reasons I use it, as I still code mostly in
Vim/NeoVim. I find Emacs configuration fragile, so it's always in
version control in case I need to roll it back. I also find that I
prefer to build my own Emacs on Debian, to stay more up-to-date.
I'm willing to put at least a little time into reconsidering Emacs
(should it be EMACS?) but would like to find a list where beginner's
level questions might be asked (or, I guess I can search with DDG or ask
an AI (I currently sometimes use chatgpt (cautiously))).
Any modern editor will likely do what you want.
Is there such a mail list?
Yes, and a sub-reddit, and...
* does (or can) EMACS use UTf-8 as its (or a) native <darn -- can't
think of the right word>
It can, yes.
* can EMACS do what I think is known as soft or dynamic word wrap -- I
mean word wrap without inserting line end characters to wrap the lines
of a paragraph
Yes
* is there somewhere a guide to LISP syntax that makes analogies to
things like Algol or C (or Python, Pascal, or such). (Background: I
originally learned Algol, then was forced to learn Fortran :-(, and then
was exposed to and supposed to learn Lisp, but I never became
comfortable with that. Something that would take (or display) some Lisp
code snippets tanslated into something more like Pascal syntax would
help me a lot, I think)
Lots of online material and some built-into emacs.
https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/emacs-builtin-elisp-cheat-sheet
* I currently edit files (in Kate) approaching 50 MB, I'd expect to do
similar size (or more) files in Emacs, with lots of features enabled
(e.g., TWiki or HTML (or other) syntax highlighting, folding (I guess
that is org mode), etc. Should I be worried?
Nope.
* Oh, I also know that at one time Xemacs was created to be a gui for
Emacs, my recollection is that, since then, Emacs has developed a gui
interface -- ahh, yes, I'm 99% sure of that (so I shouldn't have
listed / asked this here).
AFAIK they merged some time ago.
Vim/NeoVim/Emacs are all pretty solid. Also, don't ignore the pre-built
distributions like Doom Emacs, and NVChad. They make great demos, and
even full-time use distros.
Mike
