the village buzz

like alot of folks, i was persuaded to drop emacs in favor of textmate for a short while. although i really like some things about textmate, there were a ton of things i cannot live without that emacs offers. mainly, they are:

1. buffers - this is just a great idea. an idea like crack. when you start using buffers, you are pretty much locked into it.
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2. tramp - while it was kinda cool being able to work on files remotely using cyberduck, it’s nowhere near as fucntional as using dired in tramp mode.
3. org-mode - pretty much my whole life is tracked in org mode. i haven’t seen anything nearly as hardcore as org-mode for textmate.

about a month ago, i saw that a whole bunch rails guys are starting to migrate over to textmate, so it thought it might be a good idea to list out some extensions i can’t live without. for those who are just starting out using emacs, this should get you going:

1. ido - this is sort of like quicksilver.. sorta.. it tries to guess what you are going to type in file find mode. it will make you very lazy, but it’s totally worth it. whenever i work on a machine without it, i get pissy.
2. org-mode - if you take lots of notes, and have a life organized by tasks.. and even want to use latex to pretty up your files, this is the way to go. there is so much to this, that it might be a good idea to watch carsten’s video on it. and scribble some notes while you watch.
3. w3m-mode - sooner or later, you are gonna end up wishing you could just view a bit of html as wysiwyg. most likely when you get an email in gnus that has been formatted in html. this is a quick way to check it out.
4. anything-mode - this mode keeps track of what you have been working on and what you have been typing. it then tries to guess what you are trying to do when you start pecking away.
5. boxquote - if you use mailing lists at all for support (and who doesn’t?) it makes alot of sense to break apart your text before posting it.. boxquote puts:
6. snippets - this is really a rip off (that i can tell) of textmate. i think the snippets are exactly the same. still, it’s a great idea, and it rocks.
7. rails - there are a ton of ways to do this. i suggest you try as many as you can find. development is a really personal thing, and i found that no approach and no IDE really works like you want it to. culling the best approaches from everywhere is the best, but starting at that link will give you a good takeoff point.
8. jabber-el - if you use twitter or identi.ca, you should probably think about accessing them through jabber. this plugin lets you do that with no weirdness. this is a good way to follow microblogging with a sensible (plaintext) interface.

that’s all i can think of for now, but i would really like to hear what everyone else can’t live without in emacs.