Software Alternatives & Startups

GNU Emacs VS CKEditor

Compare GNU Emacs VS CKEditor and see what are their differences

GNU Emacs logo GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more.

CKEditor logo CKEditor

Real-time collaborative future-ready rich text editor
  • GNU Emacs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-19
  • CKEditor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-08

CKEditor 5 is a modern WYSIWYG rich text editor that can easily accommodate the requirements of businesses and users in the age of digital transformation. It allows software creators and developers to build powerful writing solutions for applications of all sorts, within hours. Thanks to a fully customizable framework, ready-to-use builds, native integrations, extensive documentation, and reliable customer support, the editor can be fully tailored to your needs.

To provide users with all-around streamlined and collaborative writing experience, you can additionally include advanced features such as Track Changes and Comments, Revision History, and (if preferred) Real-time Collaboration! Easy Export to PDF and Word, responsive images, pagination, Markdown input and output support, and robust paste from Word and Google Docs are also popular choices.

GNU Emacs features and specs

  • Highly Extensible
    GNU Emacs is highly customizable, allowing users to configure nearly every aspect using Emacs Lisp. This makes it remarkably adaptable for various workflows.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    There is a wide array of plugins available for Emacs, extending its functionality for programming, text editing, project management, and more.
  • Versatile
    Aside from text editing, Emacs can function as an email client, web browser, terminal emulator, and more, making it a powerful multi-purpose tool.
  • Free and Open Source
    GNU Emacs is free to use and modify, with source code available under the GNU General Public License, encouraging collaborative improvement and transparency.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Emacs runs on many different operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and various Unix-like systems, ensuring a wide reach and consistent experience across platforms.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Emacs

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its vast array of features and unique keybindings, new users often find Emacs difficult to learn initially.
  • Performance
    Emacs can be slower compared to more lightweight text editors, especially when heavily customized or handling large files.
  • Keyboard-Centric Interface
    Emacs relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, which can be overwhelming and complex, leading to potential finger strain from extensive use.
  • Complex Configuration
    While its customizability is a strength, configuring Emacs to fit personal needs can be time-consuming and complex, requiring knowledge of Emacs Lisp.

CKEditor features and specs

  • Real-time collaboration editing
    Premium
  • Comments
    Premium
  • Track changes
    Premium
  • Revision History
    Premium
  • CKBox File Manager
    Premium
  • Autoformatting
  • Autolink
  • Autosave
  • Basic text styles (Bold, Italic, Highlight, Underline, Strikethrough, Subscript, Superscript)
  • Code & Quote Blocks
  • Drag and drop
  • Export to PDF and Word
    Premium
  • Find and replace
  • Font styles
  • Image resize, style & alignment
  • Image responsiveness
  • Inserting images by pasting URL
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Lists (bulleted, numbered, checklists)
  • Markdown support
  • Math and Chemical formulas
    Premium
  • Media embed
  • @Mentions
  • Pagination
    Premium
  • Paste from Word & G-Docs
  • Read-only support
  • Restricted editing
  • Spell and grammar checking
    Premium
  • Tables support with columns resizing, selecting rows and columns
  • Text layout
  • Word count
  • React integration
  • Vue JS integration
  • Angular integration

Analysis of GNU Emacs

Overall verdict

  • GNU Emacs is widely considered to be a powerful and versatile text editor, especially among programmers and developers.

Why this product is good

  • Highly Customizable: Emacs can be extensively customized with Emacs Lisp, enabling users to tailor the editor to fit their specific workflow.
  • Rich Ecosystem: There is a large variety of plug-ins and extensions available, which can transform it into much more than just a text editor.
  • Built-in Tools: Emacs includes numerous built-in tools such as a debugger, calendar, email client, and file manager, making it a comprehensive development environment.
  • Cross-Platform: Emacs runs on multiple platforms, which makes it accessible to a broad audience.

Recommended for

  • Programmers and developers who appreciate a customizable and extensible tool.
  • Users who want to integrate various development tools into a single environment.
  • Individuals comfortable with learning Emacs Lisp to create and understand custom scripts and configurations.
  • People interested in a text editor that has a strong and supportive community.

GNU Emacs videos

Switching to GNU Emacs

CKEditor videos

CKEditor 5 - Collaboration features

More videos:

  • Demo - CKEditor 5 – Revision History feature

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GNU Emacs and CKEditor)
Text Editors
69 69%
31% 31
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Rich Text Editor
0 0%
100% 100
IDEs And Text Editors
76 76%
24% 24

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GNU Emacs and CKEditor

GNU Emacs Reviews

14 BEST LaTeX Editor for Mac & Windows in 2022
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It is one of the best LaTeX editor for Mac that allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Top 7 Notepad++ Alternatives for You
Emacs has been around in its various forms since 1976 and is another very worthy Notepad++ alternative. When I first started using Emacs I have to admit that I didn’t find it the easiest to use. But once I got used to it I realized just how powerful Emacs is for the programming community.
10 Best Notepad++ Alternatives in 2020
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
7 open source alternatives to Dreamweaver
Vim or Emacs. Without participating in the holy war between these two traditional text editors, I can safely say that there are a number of enhancements for web editing available for both. So if you're already a terminal junkie, take your pick. Or, if those don't satisfy, try one of these Emacs/Vim alternatives.
Source: opensource.com
10 Best Sublime Text Alternatives in 2019
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com

CKEditor Reviews

14 Best Open Source WYSIWYG HTML Editors
CKEditor 5 is a feature-rich and open-source WYSIWYG editing solution with great flexibility. The user interface looks modern. Hence, you may expect a modern user experience.
Source: itsfoss.com
Looking for a CKEditor? Try these 10 Alternatives
CKEditor is a popular, versatile WYSIWYG text editor which allows you to write content directly on web pages or online applications. It can be used to create Word-like documents or provide a simple toolbar for email and instant message content. CKEditor provides rich text formatting options as well as spell check.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CKEditor should be more popular than GNU Emacs. It has been mentiond 11 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GNU Emacs mentions (6)

  • Emacs daemon as sytemd service in debian 12 (gnome)
    Cat .config/systemd/user/default.target.wants/emacs.service [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1) https://gnu.org/software/emacs/ [Service] Type=notify ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/emacs --fg-daemon # Emacs will exit with status 15 after having received SIGTERM, which # is the default "KillSignal" value systemd uses to stop services. SuccessExitStatus=15 # The location of the... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Why does emacs exec path variable not just copy the users path variable?
    ## If your Emacs is installed in a non-standard location, you may need ## to copy this file to a standard directory, eg ~/.config/systemd/user/ . ## If you install this file by hand, change the "Exec" lines below ## to use absolute file names for the executables. [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1)... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Hi DM's, what medium do you use to organise your campaign?
    For gathering notes, writing and organizing, Org-Roam which implies Org and Emacs. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • This Guy is getting out of control at this point.
    I was heading to gnu.org/software/emacs to prove my point and it said:. Source: almost 5 years ago
  • opam doesn't see emacs?
    <><> Version-specific details <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 🐫 Version 1 Repository default Homepage: "http://gnu.org/software/emacs" Bug-reports: "https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues" Authors: "anil@recoil.org" Maintainer: "anil@recoil.org" License: "GPL-1.0-or-later" Flags: conf Synopsis Virtual package to install the Emacs editor Description This... Source: almost 5 years ago
View more

CKEditor mentions (11)

  • Show HN: I'm building an app to replace Overleaf and Notion
    The actual "word processor" or editor of notion is hot garbage, especially for software/keyboard people. Try out something like https://ckeditor.com/ and it is infinitely better. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Storybook Starter Guide: Learn Design System Principles
    For example, at CKEditor, we use a hybrid approach — Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets (Sass) preprocessor and CSS variables:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Your rich text could be a cross-site scripting vulnerability
    Another sign that your application might vulnerable to SXSS is simply whether or not you are using a rich text editor, such as TinyMCE or CKEditor. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Rails Frontend Bundling - Which one should I choose?
    Problematic dependencies. Some dependencies like CKEditor are designed specifically to work with Webpacker and won't work with other tools. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Best Text Editor to integrate with React?
    At my work, we recently released a beta of our switch CKEditor, coming from Draftjs. Works pretty well. They have a free license available, not sure if that would cover your use-case tho. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GNU Emacs and CKEditor, you can also consider the following products

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

TinyMCE - TinyMCE is a content editor that functions as a plug-in for Wordpress websites.

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Summernote - Summernote is a JavaScript library that helps users create WYSIWYG editors online.

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

Froala Editor - Froala Editor is a WYSIWYG HTML editor that enables rich text editing capabilities for the applications.