When comparing Emacs vs qemacs (for quick emacs), the Slant community recommends Emacs for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Emacs is ranked 10th while qemacs (for quick emacs) is ranked 39th. The most important reason people chose Emacs is:
Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing
Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.
Pro Total customizability
Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).
Pro It's also an IDE
You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.
Pro Works in terminal or as a GUI application
You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.
Pro Self documenting
Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.
Pro Great documentation
With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.
Pro Free
Licensed under GNU GPL.
Pro Mini buffer
You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.
Pro Ubiquity
Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.
Pro Vi keybindings through Evil mode
Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.
Pro Rectangular cut and paste
Emacs can select rectangularly.
Pro Lisp customizations
With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.
Pro Visual selection and text objects with Evil
Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.
Pro dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)
Dynamic word completion.
Pro Provides org-mode
Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.
Pro Integrates planning in your development process
You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.
Pro Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style
Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.
Pro Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")
Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.
Pro Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs
Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.
Pro Has been widely used for a long time
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.
Pro GTK+ widgets support
Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.
Pro Versatile
Emacs is great for everything.
Pro Gnus
Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.
Pro eshell is cross platform
Pro Interactive Shells
Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell.
Pro Input methods for most (human) languages
Including e.g. Chinese.
Pro Terminal and graphics mode
Supports the terminal mode with 'qemacs -nw' and a graphics mode.
Pro Good documentation and help
- Context sensitive shortcut help on F1.
- Good online documentation.
Pro Comfortable file browser
Easy to open and manage files (dired-mode).
Pro Supports many editing modes besides text
- Hex
- HTML / CSS
- Image
- Audio/video (maybe not the most sought after mode in a text editor, but, well, it's there)
Pro Full UTF-8 support
Including bi-directional writing.
Pro Super lightweight and fast
Pro Emacs like key-bindings
Use your muscle memory if you know Emacs already.
Cons
Con Learning curve is long
While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
Con Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work
If I ever want to lose half a day, I'll start by tweaking my .spacemacs config file.
Con Chorded keyboard combinations can be baffling
For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange. But don't worry, you can change it.
Con Hard customization
For customization, you need to learn Lisp
Con A lot of jokes in this serious software
