Re: Emacs learning curve

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

On Thursday 22 July 2010 13:36:42 Lennart Borgman wrote:

> > No, having CUA mode on by default is off the table.
> >
> > This proposal has been discussed before, and there are many problems
> > with it.  For instance, by default, C-c LETTER is reserved for user
> > customizations; CUA prevents such key bindings when the region is
> > active.
> 
> Is not this a reason for making CUA mode default? As long as it is not
> the default it will be a second class citizen and obstacles like this
> will remains. And those makes it quite a bit harder for new users.

So you mean making CUA the default would force us to change the binding
reserved for users.  I guess user's would be very happy to revamp their
key bindings.

And we would need to define new guidelines for modes.  These
recommendations are also in conflict with CUA:

,----[ (info "(elisp)Major Mode Conventions") ]
|    * The key sequences bound in a major mode keymap should usually
|      start with `C-c', followed by a control character, a digit, or `{',
|      `}', `<', `>', `:' or `;'.  The other punctuation characters are
|      reserved for minor modes, and ordinary letters are reserved for
|      users.
`----

,----[ (info "(elisp)Keymaps and Minor Modes") ]
|    The key sequences bound in a minor mode should consist of `C-c'
| followed by one of `.,/?`'"[]\|~!#$%^&*()-_+='.  (The other punctuation
| characters are reserved for major modes.)
`----

But since old emacs users and users happy with the emacs way would like
to stick to the default bindings, we would have to somehow invend
conventions that fit for both Emacs and CUAmacs.  I'm pretty sure that's
near to impossible if you want to preserve a rest of mnemonics and
consistency.

Bye,
Tassilo