The Modernization of Emacs

[Bjorn Borud]

[David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org>]
| 
| The idea is to start Emacs once and use it for everything.

...which is fine as long as you are only fiddling around on one
machine or you have emacs windows running on all your machines.

for my main use, I do start Emacs just once though.  for instance at
work my Emacs has been running for as long as the machine has been up.

| > so if the context was system administration, I'd vote for vi as
| > well. if the context was programming I'd vote Emacs.
| 
| You know you can use something like
| C-x C-f /su::/etc/fstab RET
| (or /sudo::/etc/fstab) in order to edit files as root in a normal
| Emacs session?

sure, but often it is just simpler, while you are fiddling around in a
shell, to just fire up vi to do some quick editing than to bounce back
and forth between windows.  it is usually quicker too if you have to
navigate deep directory trees -- if you're already in the directory
where the file is, it'd be fewer keystrokes to specify the file than
opening it in emacs.  even with tab-completion.

also, I make extensive use of the readline and history features when
fiddling about in the shell.  shells have a lot of context if you use
them effectively.  context that isn't easy to transport between the
shell and emacs -- and it isn't really easy to explain either.

-Bjørn