[Tycho]

Hmm, I'm still not quite sure I 'get it.' For instance, your comment, 'no fumbling with the mouse' confuses me. I've always viewed the mouse as something that saves time, a shortcut to where you want to go or what you want to do. Especially on a Mac with non-maximized windows and Exposé mapped to a mouse button, I've never felt like I was 'fumbling.' I guess I'll ask an Emacs user to demonstrate next time I meet one.

[silentbicycle]

Exposé breaks down when you have a hundred buffers open, though. iswitchb cuts through that like a bullet through butter.

The mouse is better for some things (especially relative/spatial stuff), and the keyboard for others, but interfaces that make you switch back and forth are clearly problematic. Rather than popping up dialog boxes and alerts, Emacs displays results (such as compiler output) in another buffer. If it needs immediate input, it uses the minibuffer, a one-line buffer at the bottom of the screen.

In either case, its full text-editing functionality is available. You can run a directory browser/editor, a web browser, shell, interpreter, e-mail client, irc client, etc., and it's just another text window.

FWIW, Marco Baringer's SLIME screencast ( http://common-lisp.net/project/movies/movies/slime.mov ) is a pretty good example of proficient Emacs usage. That convinced me to try Emacs after using vi for several years.

[Tycho]

Ok after watching that link and reading these comments i'm starting to understand a little. I installed Aquamacs (other emacs clients were too ugly IMO). I can see that emacs perhaps had a lot of features Visual Studio had BEFORE vs, and that it's a stable, multi-platform, multi-language environment. I can see also that some of the text editing/formatting functions would probably work better than what I currently use Excel for. I can see the attraction of an uncluttered dashboard/interface too. And extensibility. But as a beginner I can't yet relate to this 'context-switching' problem and the appeal of running all sorts of applications inside a text editor.

[silentbicycle]

No problem. I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other (heck, I use vi too), but I figured a video might help.

Also, for you or anyone else reading this thread, http://emacswiki.org/ is the place to go for info.

[glaze]

Thanks for the slime.mov link, I learned a couple of nice things about Emacs UI from that.

[sjs]

There are operations where the mouse is more efficient than the keyboard and vice versa. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

That said, I often trade the time + context switch of moving to the mouse for a slightly less-efficient keyboard command. Overall it's probably a toss-up, I just like to stay near the home row.

My friend at work uses the mouse a lot and he's very good at using it to edit text.

[strait]

Agreed. IDE with extensive keyboard shortcuts + using the mouse occasionally for the odd-length text jump/highlight VS emacs baroque command structure is probably about the same for those who have mastered each. Years of surfing the web have most people very adept and quick with a mouse.