# abot emacs and vim



## struggling_wang (Sep 24, 2006)

hi,

i am a student of Computer Science, i just bought a mackbook, for the os, i think it is ok to use because it is like the linux or unix os some parts, but there are some problems with me, first, when i use terminal to open emacs, no gui version, and i also did not find the gui version emacs, is not there any gui version emacs in Mac? Second, i normally use vim, but also there gives me an error, Can not open display. someone told me that the X window is different from linux and unix, but why gvim command still exists? then i find one which seems to be gvim, but the font size is soooooooooooo small, i try to use command set guifont to change, without use.
could u give me some hints to deal with it? thank you very much


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## nixgeek (Sep 24, 2006)

GNU Nano is included with Mac OS X.  However, if you install the Developer Tools you can compile any app you want.  This will allow you to have GNU Emacs and Vim if you want.  I actually compiled CenterICQ (a terminal-based multi-protocol IM client that is simply awesome ) without any problems after I installed the Developer Tools.  Also remember to install X11 ifyou haven't done so (it's included in the discs).  If you have it installed, then launch that first and then from the xterm that opens compile the apps that require X11.  Remember that Mac OS X uses Quartz for the GUI (which is Apple's proprietary code) instead of X11 (which is open source), but it includes X11 in order to run open source UNIX applications.

Also remember that OS X, although very Unix in nature, is mainly meant to be configured from the GUI.  When you launch the OS X Terminal, go to the menubar and select Terminal-->Windows Settings and then select Display from the drop down list.  There you can configure the font.  If you use the X11 xterm, you can probably do the command you used or configure it from the X11 menu on the menu bar.

Hope this helps.


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## struggling_wang (Sep 24, 2006)

thank you very much


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## cfr (Oct 25, 2006)

There _is_ somewhere out there an aqua version of emacs. I've never tried it as my initial experiments with editors resulted in a strong preference for vim. (Yes, I know, so let me emphasise that this is a _personal_ preference and not a judgement on emacs.)

Also, are you sure gvim is installed by default? The OS's version of vim doesn't include it on my system - only the version I installed myself in /usr/local. I assume this is because by default there's no means of using it. It only makes sense to have gvim if you've installed X11.

- cfr


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## boyfarrell (Nov 14, 2006)

Install darwin ports and then install xemacs or emacs (or just build from source). 

I have also noticed that the default version of emacs with OSX doesn't launch the GUI - does anybody know why this is? It is as if it is automatically loading with --no-window option.

Dan

PS - you can also use fink, but this in general installs binaries.


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## lurk (Nov 14, 2006)

Which GUI?  Emacs supports three I can think of off hand - two of which will run on your mac.  The default emacs is text only, it does not support any gui.  

Me, I like the carbonized one.


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## Viro (Nov 15, 2006)

You might want to check out http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/carbonemacspackage.html


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