[xte]

Well... Because is a complex, utter, inflexible software.

For instance: I need to write a letter, on my desktop I start skeletor (Emacs built-in template solution) with a single keypress, choose the wright template, start writing in pure text, hit C-c C-e and choose the appropriate export format, for instance pdf via LaTeX. In a fraction of time I made a document far superior of any word-processor can ever made, without wasting time in formatting. Same if I have to create slides. Same if I have to mix tabular data, literate stuff like write down a formula or a software procedure and verify it live from the code inside the document etc.

The level of ease, flexibility, simplicity, reusability, integration you can have on text-centric systems you can't even imaging to reach with modern/classic GUIs.

Another example from my personal workflow: sometime I have to put notes in agenda, like TODO: fix xyz etc. I can simply add relevant SCHEDULED or DEADLINE or whatever in the file I'm working on and see it properly in agenda. I can have documents spread on multiple files for many reason but being presented and exported as a single one or vice versa. I can link emails anywhere, export them inside the document etc.

No other IDE, PIM suite, office suite can do the same.

[chrisseaton]

> hit C-c C-e

I have no idea what this even means so it’s already too complicated for me to follow!

[xte]

Well. Basically if I have to write a letter I:

- hit a single key on my keyboard (pause to be precise)

- hit 'l' followed by few arrow down to choose between italian, french, swedish or english letter template than enter

- start type the letter (my sender address autocompleted, I only type firs letter than tab and yasnippet insert the rest correctly)

- hit a two key combination (control+c than control+e) or run org-export and quickly answer (with predefined defaults) where to save my file than create and open a nice pdf ready to print, optional scanned signature included.

Of course that work anywhere on my desktop, I do not have to open any specific application, choose templates, choose from them, fight to format the text properly, find in complex menu how to insert an image (my signature), go looking for it on disk etc. Of course my letter get properly saved/archived digitally, I can send via mail in other two keystrokes etc.

It's normal that sound complicated for you if you never tried it. I see many colleges that remain astonished seeing my demos inside Emacs and can't hardly figure out what happen on my desktop. It's a path to learn something new and effective, but learn an OS, a different system not a simple single-purpose application.

[chrisseaton]

Well I'm sure you must have good reasons for setting something up like this and it must work for you, but to me it all sounds like mysterious incantations (why are you pressing the pause key to do something other than pause something?) and over-optimisation, rather than making things plain and simple.

How many letters do you write a day for it to need to be optimised into single key shortcuts?

My bottleneck is never formatting a letter - it's deciding what to write.

Also: what I actually meant was I didn't recognise C-X as meaning press the control key and then the X key. I've always seen that written as Ctrl + X. Why does Emacs need to do it differently to everyone else?

[xte]

> why are you pressing the pause key to do something other than pause something?

because I do not use pause key for any purpose and single-key action are super-comfortable. For instance in my setup I open my mail dashboard (notmuch-emacs) with it's saved searches that I can open with a mouse click or a single key action again), tags etc simply hitting F6, shift+F6 open a mail compose buffer (window), F10 open firefox with a work profile, shift+F10 firefox with a personal profile, F7 open agenda, shift+F7 open agenda's main file etc.

It's far simpler, efficient and comfortable than click on some launchers that are always less than you need. Only I feel the pain that actual keyboards offer far less keys than in the past...

> How many letters do you write a day for it to need to be optimized into single key shortcuts?

I write them rarely, but I have no shortcut for letter but for ANY documents, the pause keys simply popup a menu that present me some personal choices (letter, reports, slides, projects of various kind and languages etc), I choose one from the list and find it pre-made as much as possible. Only for letter I use normally double-window envelope that to work properly demand a certain position, certain address format, certain fonts etc. If I made them by hand and rarely I certainly make mistake, have template them once I can write straight away painless. It does not cost me substantially anything, only around half an hour once in my life and pay back at any letter I write. Same for slides. It took few hours to made few personal template and after I can only write down contents. Same for thesis, reports, ...

Basically a step at a time I crate my digital environment thanks to Emacs and now I have anything at my fingertips at an unprecedented level and essentially at no cost since I add stuff when I have time, calm, without pressure nor frustration and I found it back when I need and perhaps I'm on hurry.

For instance I have regular invoices by mail (telephone, electricity, water supply bills) in the past I spend few time regularly to read them (I normally have them auto-paid by the bank) and archive by hand. Now thanks to notmuch hooks I have simple scripts that when a known bill arrive archive it accordingly and add a small note to my startup dashboard. So now when I have time I read the bill with a simple enter in the dashboard, when I quit the entry goes away from the dashboard and anything is done. If the correspondent payment does not show up in ledger (personal accounting) after some time (actually I'm not developed anything that guess when to expect the payment from an invoice) an alert popup in my dashboard and when I open it I found in a click/enter the "unmatched" invoice...

I have similar automation, all made in free time when I'm willing to build, for mail autorefiling (IMAPFilter), with Alt+F6 (my "official mail key") I go straight to unread mails or get a "no unread mail" message in the minibuffer echo area and mail are automatically refiled as much as possible in their proper dir. After a certain amount of time and depending of mail directory IMAPFilter automatically delete the message helping me keep my mails clean and easy to search. When an unread message need to be left around for some reason I may add a proper tag to snooze or categorize it in some temporary way, few tags can be added by single keypress on the message, for instance 'l' add "live" tags that automatically show up in general dashboard, and mail dashboard, O add "order" tags for online shopping done but waiting to receive the package, T add todo tag etc.

It's more complicate to explain it than build thanks to Emacs and again I'v build in baby step and more other will come, when I feel the need for it or I'm curious or simply I have free time and willingness to automate some things.

That's in synthesis an ecosystem tailored to my needs, thanks to flexible and easy to customize software, that keep me evolving everyday. All other environment I know are like a wrench: can be useful for doing few things but can't really be customized nor evolved.

[vxNsr]

I thought emacs is a text editor, it appears here you're using it as an OS? do you boot directly into emacs?

[xte]

Something like that, Emacs is my windows manager and start at boot with autologin (I use LUKS crypto root so I do not need to type a password on personal systems). So yes, while I'm using GNU/Linux (NixOS) I can say to a certain extent that I boot directly into Emacs.

And it's not a new thing BTW, many years ago (early 2000s) there where already an Emacs WM (http://www.nongnu.org/xwem) and someone already use Emacs even as a login shell instead of bash/zsh (http://www.sxemacs.org)

You can consider Emacs as a text-centric user environment so the "editor" part is of course there :-)

Try looking on YT about "Notmuch: What email should be", "Introduction to org-ref", "literate DevOps", "Emacs reproducible research", "Conquering Your Finances with Emacs and Ledger" etc they are about few use of Emacs and often they are presented in Emacs itself, sometimes as a WM with the modern EXWM :-)

Also GuixSD (guix emacs package) and Arch (arch-packer) have system management tools inside Emacs, other generic tools exits like proced (top/htop inside Emacs), enwc (NetworkManager wrapper), ivy-pass (pass password manager wrapper), screenshot tool, ffmpeg wrappers for screencasts...

Many services have Emacs UIs like Slack (slack and ox-slack emacs packege), ERC (IRC&other chat client discord included), Jira (-mode), Maxima (imaxima), ESS for R development, various on-line wrappers including hackernews, various Google service wrappers, ix pastebin services etc

Try to look for "emacs $something" and you normally get some results, if you develop try to look for "emacs $language" and you'll find many options (also look on YT&c for thing like web-mode, emmet-mode, ...).

In the end I think Emacs is the modern and last living LispM implementation :-)