Designing a website

[Lumin]

True and helps but not necessary considering how much syntax you actually use in an avarage html file.

[tetraplan]

Hmmm, I disagree. I like to see commentary, scripts, markup and content in a single view. Helps the workflow.
Especially commentary, that's often underrated.

Groet, Erik

[Meffy]

i just downloaded emacs and :shock: ... it's got a lot of stuff there.

Yeah. Lots and lots and lots. And more than that. It's famous for that.

what's with all the nonstandard shortcuts though?

Emacs predates Windows and Macintosh (1975 for the original; the most popular variant, GNU emacs, was created in 1984, same year as the first Mac and a year before Windows 1.0 hit the market. I prefer to think of those two operating systems as having introduced their own non-standard key bindings (which have gradually gained popular acceptance and to some extent become rationalized and conjoined). :-)

and what's a practical use of emacs over a standard text editor?

For the casual user, none. It's a power tool, and takes some getting used to. In fact, I bought two O'Reilly books to learn to exploit it more fully -- "Learning GNU Emacs" and "Writing GNU Emacs Extensions." Early on I got the O'Reilly Emacs Pocket Reference, but don't need it much any more. (I still have to pull out the "vi Editor Pocket Reference" whenever using vi is unavoidable.)

For power users it offers all kinds of stuff. It can be used for nearly any file-editing task, including light editing of binaries. It supports a huge variety of programming, scripting, and markup languages -- not just with syntax highlighting, but in many cases with other language-specific functionality.

I like to use emacs to edit files on remote servers via FTP. It's almost as easy as editing local files. Very convenient!

It's extremely configurable. Because all but a few primitive operations are written in Lisp, and the source is available to you, it's even possible to rewrite practically the whole editor to suit yourself should you be so inclined. Most users are satisfied to customize it a little, or use it as is.

Probably the most important and oft-used feature of emacs is the "psychoanalyze-pinhead" command (I gave the wrong name last time), which lets you feed quotations from Bill Griffith's "Zippy the Pinhead" comics into the "Eliza" Rogerian therapy parody. Are we having fun yet?

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.

NOW, I'm supposed to SCRAMBLE two, and HOLD th' MAYO!!

Why do you say that?

I'm a fuschia bowling ball somewhere in Brittany

I don't understand.

Are you selling NYLON OIL WELLS?? If so, we can use TWO DOZEN!!

Maybe your plans have something to do with this.

PIZZA!!

Can you elaborate on that?

It don't mean a THING if you ain't got that SWING!!

I would appreciate it if you would continue.

If you STAY in China, I'll give you 4,000 BUSHELS of "ATOMIC MOUSE" pencil sharpeners!!

Is it because of your life that you are going through all this?

Do you think the ``Monkees'' should get gas on odd or even days?

Are you afraid of that?

RELAX!! ... This is gonna be a HEALING EXPERIENCE!! Besides, I work for DING DONGS!

You'll readily agree that no serious Web designer, programmer, or taco sauce drinker can do without this valuable feature.

[The Chase]

reminds mr of dr spaitso

[Meffy]

BTW, emacs makes the most sense if you're running Linux, Unix, or Cygwin (a free *nix-like environment for Windows). Then you can take advantage of emacs' ability to call Unix-style command-line tools, putting all kinds of power at your fingertips. Of course you can use those tools outside emacs too. But integrating them into a text editor makes them that much more convenient.

Again, I DON'T recommend emacs for casual users or beginners! It's a big, deep system that repays investments in time many times over... but you have to be able to make that investment. For many users it would be severe overkill. And if you want WYSIWYG it's not your tool. (Personally, I find WYSIWYG to be more trouble than it's worth sometimes, and almost always prefer to work on plain text files.)