The Call of the CLI

For some reason, I always find myself wanting to run the command-line emacs. However, this proves an issue when it comes to certain control characters, such as C-., C-DELETE, etc. I use Mac OS X and using both Terminal.app and iTerm2, I’m unable to get these control characters to pass through to cli emacs. For that reason, I continue using the cocoa emacs (installed via homebrew). Even though I’m drawn the cli, however, the graphical emacs does provide things that it doesn’t. To name a few:

• The ability to look at documents (PDFs, images, etc) directly in emacs buffers.
• The ability to load images when using w3m to browse the web or checking mail.
• Better mouse support (though, then again, who uses the mouse?).
• No issues with keybindings, as in terminals.
• Multiple frames (if you’re into that sort of thing… I’m really not)
• Colors and color options

All these are perfectly good reasons to use the graphical emacs, yet I’m still drawn to command-line for some reason. It passes sometimes, but the desire always comes back.

Oh well. I’ll live.