Can I see your OS X Emacs config file?

November 4, 2004 1:13 PM

Emacs is my new replacement for BBEdit, which could not handle large XML files (>10MB) on my system. I've applied the Reitter configs to make it more Mac-like, but I need examples of good line-wrapping, auto-arranging multiple frames, and line numbering. Can I see your OS X Emacs config file? (If it's on the Net, I've already seen it, including everything at DotEmacs.de.)
posted by Mo Nickels to computers & internet (6 comments total)

why not use smaller files, and link them together?
posted by five fresh fish at 3:40 PM on November 4, 2004

Maybe because xml has a single root node, so it'd be invalid if you had the file in parts, I guess.

I can't really help, but Pepper handles gigabyte-long text files and it's available for mac/linux/windows. I don't know whether it's osx'ised or about it's xml support though.
posted by holloway at 4:33 PM on November 4, 2004

Smaller files would be a waste of time.

Thanks for the Pepper recommendation, but I don't need text editor recommendations. I've spent the past few days testing more than 17 for large file support, XML support, syntax coloring, built-in regexp, windowing, interoperability with the Mac OS X clipboard, and other things. Emacs is the best of the bunch, mainly for the nXML add-on, for its large file support, and for because the .emacs customizations make it much more Mac-like than any of the other Unix-based editors. None of the OS X-native text editors—none at all—met the large file requirement. Pepper fails because it does not handle XML files.
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:16 PM on November 4, 2004

Aw nuts.
posted by holloway at 6:52 PM on November 4, 2004

I'd be curious to know which of your criteria vim fails, because I use it with a particular large XML file (13.5M) from time to time and it works great.
posted by majick at 7:51 PM on November 5, 2004

I was going to suggest vim too. I'm sure that somewhere there exist two or three people who have needs complicated enough to require emacs, but it doesn't sound like you're one of them.
posted by bingo at 9:01 PM on November 5, 2004