Re: Emacs for Mac OS X - questions

[David Reitter]

Marc,

there have been a lot of "gut feeling" answers here from people who
convey hear-say about Aquamacs (and a few from people who have
actually tried it).

What is correct is that Aquamacs is better suitable for people who are
used to operating systems such as the Mac or Windows and who use key
bindings for those alongside the Emacs ones.

>    - can I switch off menubar, toolbar and scrollbar?

Yes, the best way to do this is to switch to fullscreen mode.  Just
press Command-Shift-Enter (= Apple-Shift-Return).

>    - is the look & feel approximately like GNU Emacs?

Yes, absolutely.  Aquamacs has a different default font, but that can
easily be changed.  Carbon Emacs (and also Emacs.app) use a monospaced
font as default, but either way, you have a similar look and feel.
There are additional things (like dialogs and tabs if wanted), which
of course fit in with the rest of the operating system.

>    - can I open file without popup dialog - simply with C-x C-f in
>      minibuffer?

Yes, I do it all the time.

>    - can I suppress all popup dialogs?

Yes, either by not using the mouse at all, or with a simple
configuration.
That's the same in Emacs for X Windows, by the way (or Carbon Emacs).

>    - working M-w, C-w, C-y or must I use C-x, C-c, C-v?

Killing and Yanking works as expected.

>    - can I switch off tabs?

Yes, Options menu.

>    - working all this nice extension elisp packages from internet without
>      any kind of adaptations?

Yes.  Install them into a directory where Emacs or Aquamacs can find
them.
That's documented in the manual (Help menu) and on the Wiki.

Aquamacs generally requires a bit less configuration for this stuff,
but I trust you're comfortable with .emacs anyways.   Big packages
such as SLIME or JDEE work (point-and-click installers provided, no
config needed).

>    - what GNU Emacs features do not working in Aquamacs? In "Appendix
>      F - Emacs and Mac OS" is written:
>
>      "Emacs built on Mac OS X supports most of its major features except
>       display support of PostScript images. The following features of
>       Emacs are not supported on Mac OS Classic: unexec (`dump-emacs'),
>       asynchronous subprocesses (`start-process'), and networking
>       (`open-network-stream'). As a result, packages such as Gnus, GUD,
>       and Comint do not work.

All of these work on OS X in all Emacsen including Aquamacs.

> Synchronous subprocesses (`call-process')
>       are supported on non-Carbon build, but specially-crafted external
>       programs are needed. Since external programs to handle commands
>       such as `print-buffer' and `diff' are not available on Mac OS
>       Classic, they are not supported. Non-Carbon build on Mac OS Classic
>       does not support some features such as file dialogs, drag-and-drop,
>       and Unicode menus."

All of these work on OS X in all Emacsen including Aquamacs.

>    - on which inconvenience and discomforts do I have to count? What is
>      different to GNU Emacs?

As far as I can tell, the port is pretty complete.

Good luck with your switch.  You will be pleased, whether you go for
GNU Emacs (Carbon Emacs) or Aquamacs.

You can download and try Aquamacs by double-clicking on the downloaded
Aquamacs.app without the need to install.

Your questions aren't silly at all and I hope you'll find what you
need.  There is an "Emacs on OSX" mailing list where people can help
you out if you have a specific gripe.