What are these things you have that makes Emacs a modern editor?
I have cua-mode and don't show startup message. What else do I need to modernize Emacs?
What are these things you have that makes Emacs a modern editor?
I have cua-mode and don't show startup message. What else do I need to modernize Emacs?
For your consideration, two Elisp packages I've written that focus on feature discoverability and use: Casual and Anju, both available from MELPA. You can read more about them at the following links: https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual https://github.com/kickingvegas/anju
treesitter (with easily installable grammars - a big pain point) / LSP integration OOTB / themability
Plus now agent integration (aka GPTEL)
These are all trivial to implement?
`treesitter` grammars _are_ easy to install.
`eglot` is available OOTB, `lsp-mode` is easy to install and configure if you prefer.
`gptel` is easy to install and configure.
I'm getting pretty good with Emacs, but I find its Treesitter handling a bit obtuse, and the auto-installation package I found slowed the editor down a lot for reasons I can't determine. (I mean, everything slowed down, and it all sped up again when I uninstalled the package.) I'm looking forward to revisiting this when Emacs 31 comes out, though.
I also don't think I'd ever call configuring Emacs "trivial" compared to more modern editors. Matching the out-of-box experience of something like VS Code or Panic Nova requires some work. This isn't really a knock against Emacs, but I think Emacs fans -- myself included -- need to be honest about that. It's quite possible I would have picked up Emacs years earlier if I hadn't been given the impression that it was just super duper easy, especially once you picked a starter pack. It is not, it probably never will be, and I've come to believe that starter packs are actually a bad idea for most new users. If you don't understand just what it is you're putting in your init.el file and why, then if you run into problems, it's going to be way harder to figure out how to fix them.
Being many things, even if "easy to install" individually, can add up to a hassle to pick, research, install, and configure them.
Why even use `emacs` if you're not willing to learn the basics? There are plenty of alternatives that cater to that preference.
Vertico feels like a must-have to me these days. I also like to have treemacs installed.
Apart from that, I don't have a lot I insist on, and my used emacs package space keeps shrinking.
That said lately I use lem more than I do GNU emacs.