I have mixed feelings about emacs starter kits. On the one hand I'm always happy that more people might discover emacs. It's quite simply the most powerful text editor out there. Hands down. I could not imagine using a computer seriously without emacs.<p>On the other hand, the power of emacs comes from the fact that it's essentially a lisp interpreter which is good at doing text editor stuff. If you abstract this away then what you get is an editor which is implemented in emacs, but is ultimately comparable to any other text editor.<p>Emacs really shines when you make it your own. And that goes far beyond the usual "customisation" that you see. I have files full of macros that help me write lisp which eventually changes the way the editor works. And some of that functionality helps me write the macros that help me write lisp that (...and so on).<p>For those that don't use emacs the above might sound bizarre. Maybe it's only attractive to a few programmers. Or maybe you have to try it before you really understand. I don't know. But that's why I have mixed feelings.
(edit: reposted this comment in their bug tracker)<p>You might want to warn people that this enables auto-saving buffers on many buffer/frame events that are usually considered safe.<p><a href="https://github.com/thefrontside/frontmacs/blob/master/frontmacs-editing.el#L128" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/thefrontside/frontmacs/blob/master/frontm...</a><p><pre><code> (defadvice switch-to-buffer (before save-buffer-now activate)
(when buffer-file-name (save-buffer)))
; the same defadvice is applied to:
; other-window
; windmove-{up,down,left,right}
</code></pre>
This absolutely <i>needs</i> a warning.<p><pre><code> (add-hook 'focus-out-hook
(lambda () (when buffer-file-name
(save-buffer))))
</code></pre>
Also, maybe this should only happen to buffers that are already backed up in the VCS? Saving unknown changes back to the original file whenever the frame looses focus - which can happen due to external, unpredictable events - seems like an accident waiting to happen.
Some screenshots could be nice, probably most people are not tend to try it out until they see a screenshot.<p>Anyway, I am a simple man. I see people using Emacs and I become happy.
My prefered way to quickly test these things without having to mess with your own setup, elpa directories etc:<p><pre><code> mkdir /tmp/.emacs.d
wget -P /tmp/.emacs.d https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thefrontside/frontmacs/master/scripts/init-frontmacs.el
echo '(load (expand-file-name "init-frontmacs.el" user-emacs-directory))' > /tmp/.emacs.d/init.el
env HOME=/tmp emacs</code></pre>
Slightly off-topic, but:<p><i>> Most of the planet doesn't treat editor configuration as software. We do.</i><p>This is so true! And it applies to many, many other types of configuration as well.
This is very similar to what I have configured in my .emacs[1] and custom.el[2]. I like that this project is minimalist. If I were to start using emacs 2 years ago, I'd probably start with this.<p>A slight gripe I have with Frontmacs is everything is loaded eagerly on startup. I'd imagine this massively increases start up time given how heavy weight some of the packages are (yasnippet, magit, tide). I also find issues with it calling itself <i>awesome</i> without integrating with any emacs window management package.<p>Most config in emacs these days is just installing a couple of packages and toggling on and off a couple customizable variables, and occasionally a couple of `add-hook` calls. These are all low hanging fruits since packages became an official thing in Emacs. The most annoying and non-obvious part of Emacs is how it manages windows. To tame the totally insane default window management system, you pretty much have to shop for a layout manager of some sort, and in order to do that, you have to know what Emacs is doing under the hood. That's hard and I wish more of these Emacs distros would come integrated with some sane window management package.<p>I used to just rely on popwin and desktop mode mainly, and used golden-ratio and centered-window-mode for a while. Recently I've completely ripped them out of my config and replaced them with [purpose](<a href="https://github.com/bmag/emacs-purpose" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bmag/emacs-purpose</a>) and [perspective](<a href="https://github.com/nex3/perspective-el" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nex3/perspective-el</a>). I'm loving them so far, others seem to like e2wm, tile, rotate and others.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/wyuenho/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/wyuenho/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs</a>
[2]: <a href="https://github.com/wyuenho/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs.d/custom.el" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/wyuenho/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs.d/cus...</a>
After years of using other people's configs, I found that they never really fit my way of working completely and they're filled with things I don't understand and/or don't use. I think most people will want to use their own configs after a while, and that's one of emacs's greatest strengths. Nowadays we have multiple package repositories and multiple ways of configuring it to suit your tastes.<p>I also find the description filled with buzzwords and buzz-phrases to the point where it becomes meaningless.
> We don't want to maintain code, we just want to enter a few keystrokes and download more awesome.<p>The phrase "download more awesome" makes me very strongly doubt whether the authors are genuinely experienced with the difficulties of software engineering.
"Most of the planet doesn't treat editor configuration as software. We do."<p>But I also wanna be the cool kid, and not a part of the herd :'(