Thanks + question

[A.J. Rossini]

>>>>> "db" == david beede <david.beede at mail.doc.gov> writes:

    db> Now that I am confronted with learning emacs as well as R, I
    db> have to confess that some doubt is creeping in.  Since I
    db> mainly work on a Windows 98 platform, is it definitely worth
    db> using emacs, i.e., will I benefit enought from using R in
    db> emacs but using emacs for other text-editing that it will
    db> outweigh the cost of learning how to use emacs?  Sorry if this
    db> is an old, boring question...

The question, "why use a tired old editor like Emacs" is always worth
looking at. 

I finally got a Windows 2000 laptop Friday, and havn't had a chance to
wipe off windows (actually, I might not, but that's a completely
different matter -- bringing up an X11 window manager ON TOP OF
Windows was truly an awe-inspiring event; now I just need the rest of
Debian under cygwin...), but Emacs under windows has a number of nifty
features. 

Please forgive me my biases :-).

1. EFS/ange-ftp.  This tool allows for remote editing of files under
   real operating systems.  "tramp", a nice add-on package, will use
   scp/ssh to edit remotely, as well.  This, plus the S+elsewhere,
   ESS-elsewhere combination leads to a paradigm...  "Edit locally,
   run globally".  Or, my usually NIMBY-like attitude, "I'm doing
   that simulation and crunching those million observations on _YOUR_
   desktop..."
2. while Emacs _IS_ a memory hog, compared to say, notepad, it's still
   tiny on most "modern" computers, compared to say Microsloth Word.
3. Except for WYSIWYG, there are components for most things
   (on-the-fly spell checking, etc).  Also, it's a component, rather
   than having everything built in.  So you need the rest of the
   tools.  I'm still waiting for Microsoft to put a Statistics package
   into Word.
4. If you program in any other language, Emacs will do it.  In my
   case, JDE is one of the best IDEs for java, and Auc-TeX is a nice
   IDE for LaTeX production.  I still write C on a quarterly basis,
   and usually am coding Python weekly, so...
5. you can write either Unix or Microsoft Windows style "text files".
   If you don't know the difference, consider yourself lucky.
6. occasionally you might need to use a Unix system.  Emacs is on
   most. 
7. Speedbar and/or dired is nice for clicking through directories,
   both via fingers and mouse (think "windows exploder").
8. fontlock/syntax highlighting is useful.  Extensions are possible.  
   "You will learn Lisp.  You will learn to like it.  You will be
    assimilated".
9. The cost isn't that high, except that if you are used to recent
   (say, post 1987) Microsoft or Apple keystrokes, you'll have the
   reverse problem that I have.  I started using Emacs my first year
   in college, around 1985, and editing in microsoft word tends to
   send 100s of pages of paper to the printer... ("Ctrl-p, whoops,
   NO!!!!")

Besides, with Emacs, you've got one of the few WWW browsers that truly
supports CSS1, unlike any other Unix browser today, mail and news
reading without peer (esp lisp/regex based mail sorting), database
management (it's a poor second to access), an old spreadsheet program,
and nearly everything that Microsoft office has today, except for
powerpoint.  

Of course, all that was available 5-10 years ago, and hasn't been
upgraded too much since :-(.

best,
-tony

-- 
A.J. Rossini				Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics
UW Biostat/Center for AIDS Research	rossini at u.washington.edu	
FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net	rossini at scharp.org
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