I've been using Vim extensively for a while now, and I really enjoy working with it. However, I keep reading praises for Emacs. I've decided to take a look at Emacs to round out my knowledge of the Unix editors (not to mention Emacs keybindings are used extensively).
But! I'm happy doing most of my daily work in Vim. So ideally what I'd like is to look at (apart from basics) are the gaps that Emacs can fill, or things that it can just do better than Vim. I suppose the canonical example is Lisp/Scheme coding in Emacs versus Vim.
Where would you start tinkering with Emacs to really appreciate its power, and to get a good idea of how its approach to editing differs from Vim, and how the editors can complement each other? What would be a good introduction in the same vein?
Best Answer
Which features are complementary? Pretty much everything that isn't straight text editing. Reading mail, usenet, running a shell, debugger (gdb), compiling, version control integration, man pages, todo lists/project planning (org, planner), browsing web, ide (CEDET), IM, IRC, remote file editing (TRAMP), etc. There are even silly things like games: tetris, snake, bubbles, pong.
Within the domain of strict text editing, both Emacs and vi do the job, which you prefer is like which ice cream you prefer. And I agree with richardhoskins, Viper mode is probably the way to explore Emacs if you're not interested in switching whole-hog.
Note: Apologies if any of the features are provided in vim, it's been a long time since I used it, and I was a very simple user of vim.