.emacs.d VS meow

If you want to dip your toes, I'd maybe try out https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs if you like vi style keybindings or https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d or if you want to use something more traditional. Then I'd recommend https://github.com/gcv/julia-snail for the julia side of things.

Do not use doom as the heretics suggest! It is an awful experience and very janky, they also change how emacs is configured in a weird way that doesn't lead to one understanding the lisp or how emacs starts up. I'd suggest witchmacs (https://github.com/snackon/Witchmacs) or centaur emacs (https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d) to get a feel of how a config actually looks like. With doom it is obscured under so much. As an exvimmer I moved to god-mode and emacs bindings just because everything always works with these. Using evil gets a little complicated since it doesn't always function properly. But using evil is probably best for you at the moment.

My favourite emacs starter kit is centaur emacs, it makes great use of hydras and improves on the standard key bindings. But I have to say I love the look of NΛNO and the svg-lib. u/Nicolas-Rougier, have you thought about combining some of the features of centaur with your work?

If you are looking for an alternative to doom without evil mode, I recommend centaur emacs. https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d

To me, Vanilla Emacs config certainly. I create Centaur Emacs for myself and share to others.

There is https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d and there is my own distro https://github.com/Ultra-Hax/magmamacs which is more minimal but less customizable and more opinionated both of these distros are very minimal and blazing fast.

Example configuration - https://github.com/seagle0128/.emacs.d/blob/e225dbe431f1e7ad368f3fe11d63ceb60c5acfcb/lisp/init-window.el#L142

Thanks for the tip, meow looks interesting. I never got comfortable in evil-mode, but perhaps meow could be a gateway to trying emacs in anger.

Still waiting for kakoune/helix mode for gnu readline...

https://github.com/meow-edit/meow

https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el

Also see Meow[1], [2], which adopts some ideas from god-mode.

[1]: https://github.com/meow-edit/meow

[2]: https://esrh.me/posts/2021-12-18-switching-to-meow.html

You have to go further for ideal IMO.

Evil and evil-collection integrates pretty well, but Meow integrates perfectly and uses the action visible first approach.

https://github.com/meow-edit/meow

I think I'd rather hope for meow over Evil. It's close to Evil but embraces more of emacs' default bindings for calling commands.

https://github.com/meow-edit/meow

Modal editing with seamless emacs integration avoiding the need for evil-collection type packages.

Repeat action (evil handles this very nicely). see: https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/discussions/414

There's also Meow[1], which I currently use. You have to configure it first to suit your keyboard layout, but there are pre-built configs [2]

[1] https://github.com/meow-edit/meow

I was thinking about this a little more and Meow has something known as keypad mode that basically lets you call key combinations then return to Normal mode. It behaves a lot like god-mode. I just tested it out and if you install Meow you can call keypad-mode from insert and then automatically return to insert mode.

I've only tried out the selection->action model using the meow editing mode for Emacs, and I initially thought it was a really great idea, but I found myself frustrated at the lack of a meaningful repeat operator. I'm not even sure what the semantics of that operator would be in a selection->action model, given that so often the thing I'm repeating in vim is a command like ci".