Why Emacs and Not BBEdit and TaskPaper

A reader asked. “You seemed happy with the combination of TaskPaper and BBEdit. Why the switch to Emacs?” This is my attempt to answer that question.

BBEdit and TaskPaper are Great

There was no good reason to stop using BBEdit or TaskPaper. I did not move from them because they were deficient in any way. I was curious about Emacs and got a push to try it out again from pprevosemacs-writing-studio Emacs configuration for authors who research, write and publish articles, books and websites..

There was some residual angst from my previous failed attempts to switch to Emacs. It made sense to give it another shot. The following makes me happy with the switch to Emacs.

One program

I don’t have to switch between TaskPaper and BBEdit all day to keep writing. Outlines in TaskPaper and the rest in BBEdit. Emacs with org-mode handles everything.

Org-mode Is Life-Changing

You can manage your life in org-mode. My life is simple, I am taking baby-steps into letting Emacs and org-mode manage my schedule and tasks.

It has a capture system which is helpful. You can pause in the middle of any document and invoke the capture system to add stuff to particular regions of a predetermined set of files. It is an absolute essential part of the org-mode workflow.

Besides the task management function, org-mode lets you write. I love outlines and I am drawn to that feature of org-mode. It has no problem managing large files and lets me move easily between sections of large documents. I can see why people are enthralled by org-mode. You can do everything through the keyboard. I don’t find myself reaching for the trackpad. (BTW, this same feature is a part of markdown-mode in Emacs.)

Barely scratching the surface of org-mode and it is adding joy to my life.

Markdown-mode

I was comfortable writing Markdown in BBEdit. It required the help of a mix of Keyboard Maestro macros, Services, some AppleScripts, and some text-expansion snippets. It worked. Sublime Text has a Markdown-package which is great. The Markdown package in Emacs is fantastic. It makes writing Markdown in Emacs painless. There is a manual which is written by Jason R. Blevins, the creator of the Markdown package. Extensive support for keyboard commands is a feature of the package and it makes writing Markdown a breeze. I write Markdown for the blog and Emacs is doing well in that task. I have switched to org-mode for everything else.

Caveats

Emacs is hard. There is much to learn. It is not only a question of opening a buffer and writing in it. That is the easy part. Almost all the actions you do on a regular basis can have keyboard commands associated with it. Remembering them all takes time. I am getting familiar with it but it is a slog.

The ability to access any command through M-x (⌥x), makes the act of living in Emacs easier. It is like the Sublime Text or VSCode command pallette. Gives you access to all the commands with the keyboard commands next to it. Helps you learn them.

Taking things slowly. There are a bunch of commands which I get to use regularly, I know those at this stage. Steadily increasing the tool-set of keyboard commands in my muscle-memory. This is going to take a while, but I am not in a hurry.

The part which is harder is to realize that Emacs can do almost everything you want it to do. It has been under continuous use for the last 40 odd years. Whatever you want to do, someone in the past has wanted to do that exact thing and they have written a little package or a little code to make Emacs do just that. You have to find that relevant resource. That involves searching on the Net and also reading through other people’s configuration files looking for the salve to ease that itch. All of this takes time.

I have started reading a book on lisp. I am not a programmer. It is a journey.

Prot on Switching to Emacs was categorical. You can’t be an “Emacs tourist.” This is not a program where you use the product over a weekend and you know everything about it. Not that kind of beast at all. “It requires commitment,” he says. No shit.

Taking Prot’s advice, I am committing to it completely. I am ditching my old workflows and creating new ones. Emacs requires immersion and that is the only way I am going to get comfortable in it. I see 20-year-veterans learning new things about it. This is a journey of a lifetime. I just wish that I had started earlier. Can’t go back in time. I am accepting the fact that I am coming to it late. But I will use it, to the best of my ability, for hopefully, the rest of my life.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie.

Thanks: Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/set-of-tool-wrench-162553/

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