I recently addressed this question over at the Stackexchange Emacs site, but that post is more geared toward Emacs users. I'll say a couple of things here about general advantages/challenges of this platform for people who might be less familiar with it. As a sidenote, my most recent novel was written using Emacs.
DOWNSIDES
Learning Curve : Emacs has a steep learning curve, and most users do a lot of customization of the basic features over time. I'm not a programmer, but a literary person. I started with an unmodified "vanilla Emacs," and struggled. Emacs did not by default even wrap lines--each line just went straight on, right off the screen. If I was starting over today, I'd seriously consider installing one of the amped-up versions that community members create, such as Emacs Prelude, that comes bundled with many commonly used packages. (Perhaps one day I'll make one of these for creative writers, but I'm not there yet.) Even so, Emacs will take time to learn. I didn't feel comfortable with it until I'd been using it heavily every day for about six months (and my general level of computer literacy was improved as a contingent benefit).
Text Editing vs. Word Processing : Emacs is a text editor, not a word processor, so it's missing some functionality writers might expect, such as pagination and headers and footers. When I have to communicate with a publisher about what I'm doing, I'll often export my work to
.odt(Libreoffice) and then to.doc(Word), which is a little inconvenient, but I put up with it.
UPSIDES
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org-mode : This is an Emacs mode for organizing lists, and it's the reason I tried Emacs out in the first place. It works beautifully for large, complex manuscripts because it allows you to create heirarchies, all in plain text. Here's a screenshot of my environment:
These sections can be 'folded' and unfolded at will, and they can be shuffled around at will, too, all with keyboard shortcuts. Want to switch chapter 2 and chapter 10? Easy. Want to see the chapter titles only, and not the content? Scenes? Only some chapters and not others? You can do that, too. `org-mode` also supports the use of a keyword called TODO, for things you're working on. I use this to organize things I need to remember. You can also create COMMENT sections, which won't be exported, when you export.
Text editing Though it's somewhat of a disadvantage to miss out on the more design-oriented features of a word processor, I will say that a text editor is amazing at editing text. Every control is on the keyboard. I never touch a mouse or trackpad when I'm in Emacs, and there are also often multiple ways to achieve the same goal, which has been good for my arthritis. There's great search functionality, and abilities I'd never seen in a word processor, such as:
ALT-twill transpose words. Put the cursor between the words "cats bats", hitALT-tand you will have "bats cats".ALT-kwill delete from your cursor to the end of a sentence.You can capitalize words with
ALT-cor uppercase them withALT-u.Emacs keeps track of everything you ever cut and paste during a session, and holds it in its
kill ring. If you cut text1, and then text2, and then text3, and now want to paste text1, or text2, or text3, you can do it easily.There are many, many more conveniences along these lines.
Git with Magit
I'd wanted to learn version control, specifically with Git. Git, like Emacs, is an amazing system that is used by programmers more than other kinds of writers. It also has a learning curve, but Emacs interfaces with it using a utility called Magit, which is very convenient. I can log into Bitbucket (where I keep my files), upload versions, look at file histories, etc, all from within Emacs.
To Sum
I've enjoyed using Emacs so far, but I still have a long way to go. I frequently hear about other ways of doing things, and suspect that in five years I'll have different ideas about what works and what doesn't. Nonetheless, I've been remarkably productive with this software. Oh, and if you've ever been angered because MSWord crashed on you, well, I have never seen Emacs crash yet (YMMV...).