Re: Gather a list of confusions beginner tend to have

[<tomas@tuxteam.de>]

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On Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 04:30:57PM -0500, Praharsh Suryadevara wrote:
> Hello,
> I've been an emacs user for ~3 years. While I'm now used to the defaults, I
> do remember in some detail, the pain it took me to get used to the
> keybindings in vanilla emacs .
> 
> I think the sore points other than the undo/redo, were C-f not being bound
> to find [...]

But that's it, exactly. I moved to Emacs from vi (later elvis, vim).
I /knew/ it was going to be painful, but I never complained `find'
wasn't bound to '/'.

It's difficult to draw the line between "make more user-friendly"
and "do as I am accustomed to". The latter will end up following
some trend which, compared to Emacs's longevity, will always be a
fad.

Witness: CUA. Most people think these days "CUA" means: "Copy" [1]
is bound to "C-c", "Cut" [2] is bound to "C-x" and "Paste" [3] to
"C-v".

But according to IBM's "Common User Architecture" (aka "CUA" [4]),
it's "C-Insert", "S-Del", and "S-Ins" respectively. But Apple's [5]
infantilised version ("C-x" is the "scissors", etc.) somehow snuck
in.

Don't get me wrong -- I do recognise value in trying to harmonise
user interfaces across applications. But consistency whithin one
application and stability over time are also values to be taken
into account. In the end, it will be a balance act, with one (or
several, that's what distributions are for!) equilibrium points,
which themselves vary over time.

What Emacs can do is to provide a solid base and all the freedom
of configurability. And Emacs does deliver on that.

Cheers

[1] called in Emacs "kill-ring-save"
[2] called in Emacs "kill"
[3] "yank", in Emacs
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access
[5] I guess they stole it from Smalltalk, as everything
   else, too.

 - t

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