What are the preferred versions of Vim and Emacs on Mac OS X? [closed]
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1496
italiano
english
français
española
中国
日本の
العربية
Deutsch
한국어
Português
RussianQuestion
For those of us that like to use the graphical version of Vim or Emacs, instead of the console version, which version do you recommend?
For Vim, there's Mac OS X Vim, MacVim, Vim-Cocoa.
For Emacs, CarbonEmacs, XEmacs, and Aquamacs.
Are there more? Which of these are ready for prime-time? If it's a tough call, what are the trade-offs? Are all of these still being maintained?
No discussion of Vim vs. Emacs, if you don't mind, or comparisons with other editors.
Solution
MacVim works well and certainly looks more mature than Vim-Cocoa, moreover there is a Cocoa plugin architecture in the pipeline for MacVim (and someone is already working on a TextMate style file browser tray plugin which is a huge ++ IMHO).
There was also a Carbon version of Vim, but this didn't offer a great deal over the Terminal version. i.e. only allowed one window open, not very OSX in appearance...
Aquamacs is very usable and looks pretty good. Supports both traditional Mac OS style keyboard shortcuts (command-O, command-S) and the Control/Meta shortcuts for those raised on traditional Emacs. It is definitely more Mac-like than Carbon Emacs. It seems stable and fast, but I am not an Emacs guru so I don't stress it all that much when I use it. I can't speak to the extensiveness of the included elisp packages, either.
Someone syncs Carbon Emacs with the upstream tree quarterly I think. Aquamacs has a more irregular schedule, but it's seen some pretty major updates over the last year.
GNU Emacs for OSX can be found at emacsformacosx.com. In addition to the latest stable release, there are also pre-release test builds and nightly builds, and Atom feeds are provided for tracking all three release types.
OTHER TIPS
I've tried Aquamacs and it's very usable and looks pretty good. Supports both traditional Mac OS style keyboard shortcuts (command-O, command-S) and the Control/Meta shortcuts for those raised on traditional Emacs. It is definitely more Mac-like than Carbon Emacs. It seems stable and fast, but I am not an Emacs guru so I don't stress it all that much when I use it. I can't speak to the extensiveness of the included elisp packages, either.
Someone syncs Carbon Emacs with the upstream tree quarterly I think. Aquamacs has a more irregular schedule, but it's seen some pretty major updates over the last year.
I just download the Emacs source from the GNU site and build it myself. I don't like too many Mac-specific features, because I want Emacs behavior to be consistent on all the platforms I use.
I like the Nextstep-derived Emacs.app formerly at http://emacs-app.sourceforge.net/ now integrated in Emacs-23 CVS (as of August 2008).
Emacs.app feels more zippy than Aquamacs to me but its just bare CVS-Emacs and doesn't come with the same amount of stuff (you have to install your own AucTeX etc.).
Personally, I've been using fink to install xemacs. It requires X but I've been using xemacs for so long that I need what it has.
Additionally, I have installed gnu emacs. It's nice because it is a completely integrated mac os x application with a dock icon and everything. I find it useful when dragging a file on top of the gnu emacs icon to open it.
Last, I should mention that mac os x uses the emacs keystrokes all over the place. stuff like ^A for beginning of text, ^E for end of text, ^N next line, ^P previous line, etc... These work in most text boxes throughout the OS.
I'm using MacVim on Mac OS X. It's very, very nice.
I get all my unixish/GNU support using Fink (which provides Debian-like package control) with the emacs22-carbon package which means I also get a clickable application. It does everything I expect it to do, and automagically starts using emacs extensions loaded with fink.
Good times.
I use the CarbonEmacs version on the Macports progam. It installs all the dependencies with just one line:
sudo port install emacs
For anyone intesrested in Macports (www.macports.org)
Some time ago, I was searching for a text editor for my new Mac. Since this was some months ago, some points might have been corrected in the meantime.
I feel that Aquamacs is by far the best OSX-Emacs. However, it feels a bit too Mac-like in some areas. For example, it rather uses several windows instead of several buffers and the coloring schemes are not "normal" Emacs-style.
If you look for a more basic set, Carbon Emacs might do it as well, though you might want to add some additional packages to add PHP support or AucTeX.
Emacs.app feels broken in my oppinion. It not even opens files using drag and drop.
Of the emacsen for Mac OS X, I have to say that after the console version of 22, CarbonEmacs is the most usable. Aquamacs just does too many non-standard, read unexpected, things with configuration. Aquamacs questions generally aren't answered in any sort of timely manner in #emacs on freenode for whatever that is worth. It seem to be held in disdain simply because it does such a terrible job of handling standard configuration options in .emacs.
I love CarbonEmacs because it sticks very close to the standard GNU Emacs distribution, while still fitting in nicely with the Mac desktop. To me, it "felt" like Emacs on my Ubuntu desktop even if it looked like a Mac application.
Emacs 22 has worked pretty well for me.
I prefer Vim built from the Subversion repository. I run it in the console where I don't need to use the mouse while editing.
