Re: Yet another discussion on improving the first time user experience

[Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:04 PM, Pascal J. Bourguignon
<pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
> What I mean is that perhaps concentrating on keys is the wrong thing to
> do, vs. concentrating on bindings and the fact that you can configure
> them as you want, and that the default bindings (foremost the oldest of
> them) are quite _optimized_.

But they are hard to press.  In the Space-cadet keyboard[fn:1], one of
the early Lisp Machine keyboards, Ctrl key besides the space bar
(similar to the position of Alt keys on PC keyboards), and Meta to the
left of Ctrl.  So, the Ctrl key is easier to press than Meta.  This is
why, the key bindings for the most used commands in Emacs involve the
Ctrl key instead of the Meta key, I think.  But Ctrl is not easy to
press now.  Yes, we can move the Ctrl key[fn:2], but many new users
don't know that.

And some commands that are frequently used, such as {open, save, close
buffer}, all require multiple keystrokes with the difficult Ctrl key.

Footnotes:

[fn:1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Space-cadet.jpg

[fn:2] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey

-- 
Best regards, Xue Fuqiao.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/