Again? Still?

I may have talked about this before, but, since it is a minor, but constant, irritation when I am coding, I'll mention it again.

I love the newest release of the emacs editor/environment. Really, it is the add-on packages that make the thing great for my use. It handles SQL wonderfully and can run a SQL shell (as well as a bash shell, a tcl interpreter and so forth. I like it bunches. It is, in many ways far superior to xemacs (which was a branch off the emacs tree back when emacs wasn't being actively developed).

Good things, though, in xemacs that are pure crap in emacs.
1. screen fonts and font handling.
I don't really care that I have a zillion available screen fonts or 10 for editing. But I do care about the size of the font. My eyes change over the course of a day and certainly from day to day. I need good control over the what I am looking at. Xemacs has that one nailed. Emacs is living in the distant past holding true to it's dumb terminal roots.

2. html-mode package. Oy vey. The emacs packages that deal with html and related files (like css) are terrible. And there is a bug. Sometimes when I got to html major mode, I end up with sgml mode instead. And once that has happened for a file, it remains so for that file even from session to session. I don't know how that is happening, but it sucks. And there is no css mode for emacs. (I don't think. I'll search today.).

What is missing in both.
1. I've been (forced, I tell you!) to write, edit and develop in php. I would much rather be writing in tcl, but I can't really farm out work 'cause nobody knows the language. (I'm think about moving to ruby, but, for not it's php) Neither xemacs or emacs seems to have a php-mode package that permits an interpreter. sigh. I have to experiment, damn it. Oh well.

What emacs has over Xemacs.
1. emacs is much, much smarter about buffer handling, file diffing, and, topping the list, printing files. WAY smarter about printing files.
2. SQL handling. OMG! This is a wonderful package. Write all the sql in a text file and move it to the database with a couple of key strokes! I'm in heaven. Two advantages for me: A) I type like I'm using my feet. And typos in a SQL shell is difficult to deal with. B) It documents the database making it easy to replicate and update. I'm in love.
3. For reasons I don't quite understand, emacs is much smarter about revision control The part I don't understand is why xemacs isn't as smart. it isn't.

So, with the couple of crippling drawbacks, I will mostly use emacs. for development and xemacs for quick editing and bug fixing.

I want the best of both.