Me, a few weeks ago:
When your brain and fingers are absolutely wired for Emacs editing, it’s a frustrating experience to have to work on the iPad, with all its touching. As a touch-typist, any time I have to move my hands away from the keyboard, it feels like I have failed.
After some searching around App Store, I eventually downloaded a few Emacs-style editors. Of these, em notes (about five bucks) offered the best solution. It links with your Dropbox account and enables you to edit text in an application folder there, ensuring you can load and work on documents and have them available as well in the “real world”, aka anywhere you’re not working on an iPad.
The Verge, today:
Oh and it should go without mentioning, that the keyboard itself is only a solution for geeks and no one else…for a regular person who wants to regularly use an iPad Pro with a keyboard, your only solution is using the UI with your fingers constantly. This is simply true; just as it’s true that only the nerdiest of nerds should learn how Emacs and its keybindings work…
Sniff.
6 Comments
Worth noting that this is The Verge forums, not the site proper.
They’re wrong.
it’s not just the nerdiest of nerds, but also anyone who writes extensively. I blog for a living, and I regret each time I have to pick my hands up off the keyboard.
Forcing people to use the touchscreen reduces productivity, IMO.
There’s a reason why Cocoa text controls support basic Emacs keybindings natively. Also, Emacs (text console mode) used to be included in NeXTstep, which is more than most Linux, BSD or Solaris distributions can say.
It’s not an insult, it’s the highest form of flattery 🙂
Nerdiest of nerds? What about vi users?
I’ll echo Bart and Nate. I code and write. Touch is great for consumption use. But if I need to write an article or psudocode and well, I know I start looking for my MB Air. I never cease to surprised how much faster I type on the iPhone’s, rather than on the iPad’s, virtual keyboard.
Just my thought, but if Apple ever brings Taptic to its virtual keyboard, this will be a big deal.