Andy Chase

Since moving to Mac OS X three and a half years ago, my use of Emacs as primary editing environment for text, HTML, PHP, XML, and pretty much everything else has dropped way off. I still use it all the time for quick command line editing of config files or Subversion commit comments, but for general text editing I've been using [TextWrangler][1]. Getting into Java development with the [IntelliJ IDEA][2] IDE was what drove the initial wedge between me and Emacs; there are plenty of people who I'm sure would argue, but IDEA is simply a better tool for working on complex Java applications than Emacs. Since Java is what I've been working with for the last two and a half years, I just haven't needed the particular combination of features that made Emacs so compelling to me for so long.

While working on the redesign of this site, however, I find myself using Emacs quite a bit, and it's been a bit like seeting an old friend. An Emacs-related search led me to [Aquamacs Emacs][3], which is a native Aqua port of Emacs with standard OS X key bindings for common operations (Open/Save/Close/Copy/Cut/Paste/Select) and other improvements I haven't investigated yet... I think TextWrangler may be on its way out.

[1]:http://barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml "TextWrangler"
[2]:http://www.jetbrains.com/idea "IntelliJ IDEA"
[3]:http://aquamacs.org/ "Aquamacs"