How to enable Recently opened files in Emacs.
Nice!
The upside of using en editor that has existed for, what, twenty five years(?) is that someone, somewhere probably have had the same problem you have right now.
The first Usenet-post about Emacs I've found is from -81, but even then it was old.
Re:In "recent" emacs versions...
jplindstrom on 2005-01-13T15:41:39
Thanks! I had no clue about M-x customize...
I have a colleague who's helping me with all this, and I really don't think it would have been possible for me to get started without such hands-on help.
And still I miss important things that _he_ doesn't know about. I mean, I've shown him things he had no idea that they existed:) "Customize" is crippling
educated_foo on 2005-01-13T16:53:35
IMHO it's much better in the long run to learn about "apropos-variable" and "apropos-function" (C-h a and C-h f), learn about "setq", and write yourself a config file. Emacs' power lies in its programmability, and you lose a lot when all you see of that power is the clunky custom interface.Re:"Customize" is crippling
merlyn on 2005-01-13T19:01:44
Well, as someone who has been using GNU emacs for a very long time (I'm thinking early 80's here), I'm going to disagree. Maybe because I already know about setq, but I'm happy to see the whole customize thing come along. In fact, most of my random.emacs startup files have become much cleaner because I absorbed all of my weird settings into customize-managed settings. Sure, I have some stuff that's not customizable, but most of it ended up in a nice clean package now. Let customize be used for "user tweakable options", and let the power users learn about setq. This is an appropriate separation.
Re:"Customize" is crippling
jplindstrom on 2005-01-13T20:40:57
It's a matter of explorability as well.
If not for the config interface I wouldn't have stubled upon that weird glasses-mode or hippie-expand:) Re:"Customize" is crippling
educated_foo on 2005-01-14T03:00:04
I'm a relative newbie (since '95, myself), but I like the fact that in Emacs there is no sharp distinction between tweaking options and programmatically extending the editor. Rather, you can advance smoothly from fixing the colors and tab-width, to automating simple editing tasks, to hacking on your mail client, to adding whole new packages to the text editor. One of the (many) things that repulses me about Eclipse is the line between the "monkey options" in the preference panel and the power to extend the environment -- knowing the former tells you nearly nothing about the latter.As Stallman noted in his essay:
While I'm not quite so optimistic, I still believe that text editing in Emacs is and should be (E)Lisp what system administration and CGI hacking are to Perl -- application domains that continually present new problems along with the tools to solve them, naturally encouraging users with some minimal technical ability to better themselves.When large numbers of nontechnical workers are using a programmable editor, they will he tempted constantly to begin programming in the course of their day-to-day lives. This should contribute greatly to computer literacy, especially because many of the people thus exposed will be secretaries taught by society that they are incapable of doing mathematics, and unable to imagine for a moment that they can learn to program.
