RE: Emacs for new users

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> For beginners I think it would be good if when minibuffer is active
> clicking in other windows did not work. Or moving to another window in
> any other way.

Hi Lennart,

Why? What possible reason could you have for such a suggestion?

That would totally prevent using the mouse to interact with other buffers during
minibuffer input. You wouldn't even be able to choose a completion from
*Completions* using the mouse.

FWIW, Icicles lets you use the mouse (if you want) in several ways to interact
with other buffers. This would work against that. I imagine that other libraries
might offer similar features.

Even providing such a protective sandbox for beginners would be a big step
backwards. There is no reason that beginners shouldn't be able to use the mouse
during minibuffer interaction.

The OP mentioned beginner confusion in several areas while learning. (That's
what learning is about, BTW.) The relevant item here was the _query-replace_
dialog: using the mouse during query-replace. It was not about the interaction
between the mouse and minibuffer input in general.

*IF* we thought this was a big problem for query-replace (and I do not), then
the solution would be to fix the _query-replace_ dialog appropriately: either
block the mouse there (ignore it) or let you use it to interact elsewhere and
then resume query-replace seamlessly. There are so many things to learn about
query-replace, including the (normal) stop-and-resume possibilities, that this
is certainly not a biggee.

It's fine to look for and listen to newbie difficulties, and that can help us
improve Emacs - definitely. But there is a tendency here sometimes to want to go
off immediately, half-cocked, and redesign stuff willy nilly at the first report
of someone not having understood something or expecting something different.

Sheesh. For the most part, these are simply reports of how people learn Emacs.
They are interesting, and we can learn from them, but they are not necessarily
alarms or calls to action.

--

Learning Emacs is like learning to ride a bike. Maybe you were _used to_ a
tricycle and loved it, so maybe adding training wheels to your new big bike will
temporarily help you a bit to adapt to it. But plenty of bike newbies never used
training wheels - it can be done.  And even if you do use them, sooner or later
you need to get your balance and find out that riding a bike is _not_ the same
as riding a trike.

Or not. Imagine seeing veteran bike riders still using training wheels, because
they got so used to it and came to think of four wheels as naturally superior to
two. (That's the way I look at things like CUA mode, BTW... Oops; no flames
please.)

When you're learning to ride a bike, yes, it does seem like a big deal ("I'll
never get this"). But hey, it can be done; it's not that big a deal; and riding
without training wheels is what bike riding is really about. As long as you are
on 4 wheels, you are not bike-riding - you might think you are, but you're not.

No, I'm not saying that "real Emac users" do this or that. But if we want to
help newbies, we should concentrate on helping them learn Emacs, not only on
giving them what they expect or are already used to.