Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode
rahuljuliato.com153 points by RahulMJ 13 hours ago
153 points by RahulMJ 13 hours ago
A bit of extra info:
- `ts` stands for "tree-sitter", meaning this mode uses tree-sitter under the hood, which is, among other things, very performant.
- There's support for the CommonMark spec and GFM, so things like `- [ ]` checkboxes and ~~strikethrough~~ work out of the box, along with many other small QoL features.
- This mode is BUILT-IN, so no extra packages are needed.
- This is currently in the experimental phase, so users need to "opt in" and load the mode to play with it, hence the first part of the guide.
I think in 31 registering the file types isnt necessary any more, the mode opens automatically for me (and i did manually delete the old markdown-mode)
Tree sitter support is half baked in the same way official LSP support is, only kind of worse.
Eglot won't help you get your system ready for LSP work, it will only avail itself if what's there. It doesn't even auto detect and configure that, either. There's no user prompting, so you'll have to read the docs to know that this even needs to be done.
Similarly, tree sitter support doesn't include the grammars! And those aren't typically sitting in your package repository, so users have to find a grammar and compile it themselves. There's not even a good recommendation given by Emacs on where to get them, leaving users to hope that whatever repository showed up on a Google search is both in good working order and safe to use.
It's really quite a failure on Emacs.
In Emacs 31 none of what you’re saying is true. Grammars auto install and setting them up is easy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1utghab/treesitter_s...
Well that's a nice change; I'm still on Emacs 30.
But note that this is not the default. Users have to enable that behaviour, and know to enable it. That's a bad default.
I speak only for myself and not the Emacs team, but ... IMO it shouldn't do this by default - unless there is a clear "winner" among all the choices.
IIRC, for eglot I had to install a Python language server. There are a bunch of them. Why would I want it to pick one by default?
I don't know if Emacs will ever have an IDE with TS and LSP working "out of the box" without some configuration. From my experience with Eglot, if it were enabled by default, it would confuse the heck out of some users who just want to, say, edit a Python script.
There are always opinionated releases like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs that can set whatever nice defaults you think should be there. Leave vanilla Emacs to be, well, vanilla. Emacs, while it can be a decent IDE, is not an IDE and shouldn't default to being one.
I recently switched from full IDE to Emacs (wrote up about the things I learned at https://github.com/KallDrexx/emacs-zero-to-ide-journey/blob/...)
Typescript is a perfect example of why Emacs shouldn't own that setup. Typescript version 6 uses the "typescript-language-server" which is a totally stand alone nom package for lsp support.
Typescript 7, is incompatible with typescript-language-server and the compiler itself now acts as a lsp.
If Emacs handles that all by default it then needs to handle versioning of each language server itself across all operating systems, handle cases when different machines have different npm version managers, upgrades, etc...
It's not impossible but it's a lot to ask, and it requires more frequent version upgrades just to keep things in sync.
I couldn't even use the built in version of eglot and had to use ELPA version for bug fixes that affect c# LSP support that were committed to the package back in December.
Emacs makes many opinionated choices about defaults; if it didn't, it would launch to little more than an elisp REPL by default.
What's important is that _you can change it_. Good defaults ensure that Emacs doesn't repel new users and casual users and users who are not interested in fiddling.
And this isn't a matter of color theme default, or font default; this is a shipped feature that _does not function_ without changes to the defaults! By default, it does not work.
> if it didn't, it would launch to little more than an elisp REPL by default.
I'm confused. Have things changed? The scratch buffer it starts with is for writing elisp.
> this is a shipped feature that _does not function_ without changes to the defaults!
Do you know how many shipped features come with Emacs that don't function without changes to defaults?
A huge number of them! Stuff like hippie-expand, ibuffer, etc. This isn't something new - it's been that way for decades.
> Good defaults ensure that Emacs doesn't repel new users and casual users and users who are not interested in fiddling.
This has been argued to death forever. While even I think they can and should change some defaults, the reality is that Emacs as an ecosystem is doing just fine without so many new/casual users, and will continue to do so. They don't want to be something for everyone.
And while I don't have the latest Emacs, in my experience with eglot - it's simply not ready for the masses. I frequently get timeouts, and would often have to shut down and restart eglot. It's been a while since I had to, so perhaps they've fixed all the issues, but it's simply not as robust as what you'd get with other IDEs. I'd rather they address those issues than the ease of use.
It launches with a scratch buffer, menu bar with populated menus, a functional mini buffer, and so on. All of this is opinionated defaults and configurable with elisp.
And yes, much of Emacs is broken out of the box and it's been that way a long while. That's not a good thing.
Emacs isn't ready for the masses. Broken defaults, and a brittle experience once features are made working is standard.
I've used Emacs for thirty years now. I don't recommend it to new users.
> Emacs isn't ready for the masses.
It never will be. It's simply not a goal they have. It's tiring to keep hearing people point it out. Emacs is also not ready to be your web server. Or your Jira replacement. It's not a lot of things - we don't need to itemize them all.
I've written a lot of stuff. Some of it I released publicly. None of it is for the masses. There are better tools for the masses - let them use those!
> I don't recommend it to new users.
"New" to what? In general, I don't recommend Emacs unless someone shows genuine curiosity. I always tell people "Give me any task, and I'll find a better tool than Emacs." And "If you want to get up and running quickly for your task, Emacs is not a good choice." Followed by "What makes Emacs worthwhile is you get it all in one package where they can interact with one another." And "It's a lifelong journey."
Nevertheless, some not technically savvy users do use Emacs today because they needed help editing files on a remote machine and I couldn't teach vim because Emacs was all I knew :-)