Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

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Hi emacs-devel,

I tend to hear the same arguments against Emacs all the time. Maybe we could have an FAQ about them on the beautiful new website? (And is this discussion welcome on emacs-devel?)

The top three I get are, from least to most frequent:

* I'd love to use Emacs, but (I hear) it's very slow to start
  (Answers include 'Not if you load packages properly, i.e. if you install them using package.el', 'Starting the GUI version is slower than the command line version', and 'Using an Emacs daemon makes Emacs resume instantly')

* The keybindings are scary
  (Answers include CUA-mode and viper/evil)

* I could learn Emacs, but vi(m) is more useful because it's available everywhere
  (Answer is Tramp, which I've found people to be very impressed by)

Ideally, if people like the idea of an FAQ, we could discuss top items to include; I'm not too interested in starting a thread about Emacs vs. the world.

Cheers,
Clément.


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Re: Adding a

[Fabrice Popineau]

Clément Pit--Claudel <clement.pit <at> gmail.com> writes:

> * I'd love to use Emacs, but (I hear) it's very slow to start
>   (Answers include 'Not if you load packages properly, i.e. if you 
> install them using package.el',
> 'Starting the GUI version is slower than the command line version', 
> and 'Using an Emacs daemon makes Emacs
> resume instantly')

I am always surprised by people themselves surprised to hear that it is not a 
problem. 

I am a Windows user, Emacs starts with Windows. When I quit my job, 
I put my laptop  in hibernation, and I resume when I come home. 
Same thing the other way around. 
Basically, Emacs starting time is not a problem because 
Emacs is not an editor you quit. And even without using a daemon,
there is always emacsclient.

Fabrice

Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Oleh Krehel]

Clément Pit--Claudel <clement.pit@gmail.com> writes:

> The top three I get are, from least to most frequent:
>
> * I'd love to use Emacs, but (I hear) it's very slow to start
>   (Answers include 'Not if you load packages properly, i.e. if you
> install them using package.el', 'Starting the GUI version is slower
> than the command line version', and 'Using an Emacs daemon makes Emacs
> resume instantly')
>
> * The keybindings are scary
>   (Answers include CUA-mode and viper/evil)
>
> * I could learn Emacs, but vi(m) is more useful because it's available everywhere
>   (Answer is Tramp, which I've found people to be very impressed by)

That's a great summary, I see the exact same three points over and over.
It would be great to have these points very visible on the Emacs'
website.

A thought that was recently out there is the comparison of not Emacs
vs. Vim, but of Emacs vs. Notepad++. The latter is a magnitude more
popular than Emacs and magnitude less powerful. However, it does a great
job of addressing the above 3 points:

- Starts up reasonably fast by default.
- Has well known bindings of Notepad by default.
- Easy to install on Windows.

One more point that's important to most users is that it has
browser-like tabs and a nice theme, all by default.

So the idea I had for making Emacs more accessible is to:

- Add `notepad-mode' (to either ELPA or Core) that derives from
  `cua-mode' and further simplifies the bindings by e.g. rebinding
  "C-f", "C-b", "C-n", "C-p", "C-o", "C-t" etc. to stuff like
  `find-file', `save-buffer', `isearch', `switch-to-buffer'.
  It would also switch to a more pleasant theme than the default.

- Add `notepadify' command (to Core) that creates/replaces ~/.emacs to
  this content:

    (notepad-mode)

The idea of `notepad-mode' is to appeal to the 0-config crowd that wants
things to "just work".  It may seem that gathering more 0-config people
doesn't serve the Emacs project directly, since they're likely to have
low percentage of bug reports and code contribution. But the lower
percentage could be compensated by the sheer quantity of users.

regards,
Oleh

Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > That's a great summary, I see the exact same three points over and over.
  > It would be great to have these points very visible on the Emacs'
  > website.

It would be useful to post these points,
but let's not post them in the form of responses to hostile
questions.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

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On 2016-07-12 01:08, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   > That's a great summary, I see the exact same three points over and over.
>   > It would be great to have these points very visible on the Emacs'
>   > website.
> 
> It would be useful to post these points,
> but let's not post them in the form of responses to hostile
> questions.

You're right, of course :) Thanks for pointing this out.


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Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Clément Pit--Claudel <clement.pit@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 02:54:55 +0200
> Cc: Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr>
> 
> I tend to hear the same arguments against Emacs all the time. Maybe we could have an FAQ about them on the beautiful new website? (And is this discussion welcome on emacs-devel?)
> 
> The top three I get are, from least to most frequent:
> 
> * I'd love to use Emacs, but (I hear) it's very slow to start
>   (Answers include 'Not if you load packages properly, i.e. if you install them using package.el', 'Starting the GUI version is slower than the command line version', and 'Using an Emacs daemon makes Emacs resume instantly')
> 
> * The keybindings are scary
>   (Answers include CUA-mode and viper/evil)
> 
> * I could learn Emacs, but vi(m) is more useful because it's available everywhere
>   (Answer is Tramp, which I've found people to be very impressed by)
> 
> Ideally, if people like the idea of an FAQ, we could discuss top items to include; I'm not too interested in starting a thread about Emacs vs. the world.

We already have a FAQ, so if we want to provide this information, I
think it should be added to the existing FAQ.

Thanks.

Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Robert Weiner]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 10:34 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> The top three I get are, from least to most frequent:
>>
>> * I'd love to use Emacs, but (I hear) it's very slow to start

Ask them how long their brain takes to start up and how often they
shut it down and restart it.  Tell them Emacs is like that.
If they don't understand the parallel, then they may never be a good
user candidate  :-)

>> * The keybindings are scary

Maybe because there are many of them, but similarly to the first point
above, people who do not care for logically arranged structures that
provide powerful capabilities will not be good candidates for usage.
Those who do appreciate such things can easily be convinced with a bit
of investigation.  Emacs has the most logical and repeated use of key
bindings of virtually any program in use today.

>>   (Answers include CUA-mode and viper/evil)

Yes, you can emulate pretty much anything they might be comfortable
with already.

>>
>> * I could learn Emacs, but vi(m) is more useful because it's available everywhere
>>   (Answer is Tramp, which I've found people to be very impressed by)

Having one location with pre-built, easily one click downloadable and
installable Emacs packages for all major platforms certainly would
help in such regard.

>>
>> Ideally, if people like the idea of an FAQ, we could discuss top items to include; I'm not too interested in starting a thread about Emacs vs. the world.

Emacs is for people who want an `environment' that continues to
empower them across time.  vi and similar tools are for people who
want point tools that augment another environment that they use all
the time.

Bob

Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

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On 2016-07-11 10:34, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Clément Pit--Claudel <clement.pit@gmail.com>
>> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 02:54:55 +0200
>> Cc: Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr>
>>
>> I tend to hear the same arguments against Emacs all the time. Maybe we could have an FAQ about them on the beautiful new website? (And is this discussion welcome on emacs-devel?)
>>
>> The top three I get are, from least to most frequent:
>>
>> * I'd love to use Emacs, but (I hear) it's very slow to start
>>   (Answers include 'Not if you load packages properly, i.e. if you install them using package.el', 'Starting the GUI version is slower than the command line version', and 'Using an Emacs daemon makes Emacs resume instantly')
>>
>> * The keybindings are scary
>>   (Answers include CUA-mode and viper/evil)
>>
>> * I could learn Emacs, but vi(m) is more useful because it's available everywhere
>>   (Answer is Tramp, which I've found people to be very impressed by)
>>
>> Ideally, if people like the idea of an FAQ, we could discuss top items to include; I'm not too interested in starting a thread about Emacs vs. the world.
> 
> We already have a FAQ, so if we want to provide this information, I
> think it should be added to the existing FAQ.

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks; don't you think putting this information in the existing FAQ would drown it, though? There are over 100 questions in there.

Clément. 



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Re: Adding a "misconceptions about Emacs" FAQ on the website

[Nicolas Petton]

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Clément Pit--Claudel <clement.pit@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Clément,

> Thanks; don't you think putting this information in the existing FAQ
> would drown it, though? There are over 100 questions in there.

I agree.

There are already (partial) instructions on the download page of the
Emacs website[1].  I'm in favor of adding whatever is missing to that
page.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html

Cheers,
Nico

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