Text Editor Nonsense

Do you fellow /prog/riders actually use the advanced features of your text editor? I can use both Vim and Emacs comfortably at this point, but really all I ever end up doing is customizing the colors and the keys to split windows / make tabs. I only ever use Vim macros as sort of mass text morphing scripts, like adding a random number at the end of every line, but I never really encounter a scenario where a macro would make programming much easier.

Most of the time if I'm programming I'm too occupied thinking about the program itself to try to think up clever ways to use the editor.

What are some cases where you've actually used an advanced feature of your editor; like macros, to aid in your programming?

>>1
Macros are great for Copyright and header clauses on top, if_else and switch statements (I make mines default with 4), searching variables and executing commands (my fav. wen you are testing code), etc..

Emacs' paredit and rainbow delimiters are pretty cool.

Disclaimer: my ~/.emacs is 200 lines long.

>>3
wc -l .emacs .vimrc
206 .emacs
82 .vimrc
288 total

Mine's also pretty long. Longer than my .vimrc, though I find myself using Vim more these days.

>>2
The feature I put in Emacs that I use the most is F1 on a function name to bring up the man page in a split window right next to it.

For example:

File Edit Options Buffers Tools C Help
[-] = = scratch.c --------------------------|[-] = = *Man syscall* -----------------------
01 #include <stdio.h> | 01 SYSCALL Linux Programmer Man SYSCALL(2)
02 #include <unistd.h> | 02
03 | 03 NAME
04 int main(int argc, char **argv){ | 04 syscall - indirect system call
05 syscall<F1> | 05
| 06 SYNOPSIS
| 07 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* Se$
| 08 #include <unistd.h>
| 09 #include <sys/syscall.h> /* For$
| 10
| 11 int syscall(int number, ...);
| 12
-UU-:**--F1 scratch.c All (5,9) (|-UUU:%%--F1 *Man syscall* { page 1 of 1} T

If by macro you mean the 'q' command, then yeah, it's only really useful for ad-hoc text-processing tasks; usually for formatting text in my experience. Hardly ever used, but can save a lot of time when it's needed. In a broader sense, where macros can be key mappings and whatnot, I agree with what >>2 is saying.

I don't know what other advanced features you're talking about, but I certainly don't use everything vim has to offer. Or maybe I do, through the plugins I use.

>>5
Macros were how we scripted many things on ex-vi. vim just gives a facility to read the commands in a script. So to answer your question, yes.

sublime text

>>6
What question?

I went from using gedit and other shitty editors for absolutely everything, to using vim for absolutely everything. So far, it's much more efficient for moving around and maybe writing stuff that appears to often, but other than that, I've never used the full potential of vim, because I keep telling myself it will be done one of these days.

I guess the autocompletion feature is cool too.

>>9
Heh. Me it was gedit -> kate -> emacs. gedit was fucking shit.

>>10
It still is fucking shit, although I've seen some retards swearing by it.

slime/slimv and clang-complete are the shit. Emacs has CUA mode.

Autocomplete has got to be the biggest single improvement in speed in the last 20 years. I never notice it until it's not there but without it you need to memorize more, which slows you down when learning something.

I use Emacs, and must shamefully admit that I have come to use some ``advanced features'' of it. First off, I some of the usual fare of IDO mode (must have), eshell, undo-tree, some find-grep thing, a slightly modified dirtree, simple prepackaged functionality functionality in general. Some keyboard shortcuts for this and that, but that would be the baseline.

Then come other modes. I of course use paredit, nrepl and its IDEish functionality, and a host of other little commands for Clojure code. I came to make a skeleton I needed for org-mode, but I certainly don't use all of its functionality, not even a significant subset.

I made the rather large effort to become accustomed to Emacs' VC facilities, which are powerful and useful, but require the memorization of many arbitrary shortcuts.

When I need to transmogrify text as basically data, I use Vim or spreadsheet.

I'm still not sure if I'd recommend learning these editors to someone without a specific use case for them. If you use Lisp, or C, or L^AT_EX a lot, then Emacs is a natural choice. When working over SSH, you have little choice but Vim. Otherwise, I see little point in taking the plunge and learning them, it's not like they'll actually make you a better programmer.

>>14

If you use Lisp, or C, or LATEX a lot, then Emacs is a natural choic

I use all of those very extensively, but my wrists are at a point where M-x C-x C-M-C-M-C-C-A-B-m is going to get painful.

Is Emacs worth the RSI?

>>15
The Killer Instinct-esque key combos aren't really bad on your wrists provided that you have a full set of modifier keys (i.e. all on each side), and that you type properly using both hands, using the hand opposite to the letter to press Control, etc.

Otherwise, you'll be in a world of hurt.

Emacs is very beautiful.

>>15
setxkbmap ... -option caps:ctrl_modifier

>>18
I remapped mine to ESC for Vim, made a huge difference.

Check em

Remapping M-x C-x C-M-C-M-C-C-A-B-m to something else is like putting shit on a bag and eating the sealed bag so it doesn't taste bad. You're still eating shit.

>>21
No, you are actually eating the sealed bag.

emacs and vim are too advanced for me, I don't really need any other feataures other than regex and macros, I've been using ed alot lately even thou no macros you can still write a script and have it run it on a text file, it behaves like a macro.
sometimes an input method is all you need, nano is cool but eats my whole screen, so ed is better.