Re: Gather a list of confusions beginner tend to have

[Praharsh Suryadevara <praharsharmm@gmail.com>]

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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, (though that would need remapping forward-char), C-o not being
bound open file. I do think it might make sense to poll on reddit. and
again to clarify _(I don't think any of these ideas would break backward
compatibility, but instead only add options to increase familiarity with
vanilla emacs for new users)_

@yuan I was following the threads earlier and I checked the idea of a
profile was suggested
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-04/msg02032.html, I
think a starter wizard could go well with this as a base for keymaps at
least if you're thinking about implementing it (?). The other thing I was
thinking was maybe you could write directly to init.el with use-package
with comments in an understandable manner following the discussion
about custom here
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-09/msg00306.html. I
think this would teach and encourage users to tweak their configurations
which I think would be a win-win.

I would be willing to contribute some time to this.

Thanks,
Praharsh






On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 2:31 PM Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> > On Sep 8, 2020, at 2:48 PM, Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> I think everybody would agree on attracting more people to use
> >> Emacs—that means more blogs and help, more contributor, etc. And
> >> people agree that Emacs isn’t as beginner-friendly as it could be. The
> >> problem is what to improve, and how.
> >
> > Not necessarily.  Personally, I don’t see much benefit in trying to
> > appeal users that have no background in coding whatsoever, and users who
> > wouldn’t really benefit from what Emacs has to offer.
> >
> >> As the first step, we should collect real experiences from real
> >> beginners: someone starts to use Emacs just recently (e.g., less than
> >> one year).
> >
> > The major problem is that someone who fiddled with Emacs now and
> > couldn’t make use of it may think differently when a couple years later
> > they have some knowledge of programming (not necessarily professionally)
> > and some experience with other tools.
> >
> > Anecdotally, I’ve picked up and quit Emacs multiple times before I
> > decided to stay with it.  And it’s been more than 6 years now that I’m
> > using it for the good part of my computing.  What was puzzling and weird
> > to me back then is useful and essential to me now.
> >
> > What I mean is, what is good for newcomers, who are not guaranteed to
> > stay, can be irrelevant, not so good, or even off-putting to actual
> > users of this package of software.  Emacs is a power tool, and like all
> > power tools, requires two preconditions to be useful: 1) the user should
> > *need* the tool, and 2) the user should be willing to put in the time to
> > learn the tool.  And a good power tool is designed with user who need
> > and use them the most in mind.
> >
> > IDK. IMHO, we shouldn’t break stuff in Emacs itself, and maybe promote
> > distros for people that want a more "modern" experience instead.  They
> > don’t have the backwards compatibility baggage of Emacs so they will do
> > it better than Emacs core nevertheless.
> >
> > --
> > İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp / @cadadr / <https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
> > pgp:   024C 30DD 597D 142B 49AC 40EB 465C D949 B101 2427
> >
>
> I generally agree with your point. However, what I have in mind is not
> changing defaults, but rather a configuration wizard, that can prompt user
> and let him select from Emacs binding vs CUA binding, Emacs undo vs simple
> undo/redo, themes, etc. I’ve seen such wizard in Intellj Idea, Spacemacs,
> etc. Something like (just an example):
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Set UI themes:
>
> <some C code>
>
> - [ ] default
> - [ ] dark
> - [ ] ...
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Keybinding notation:
>
>     C (control)   Ctrl
>     M (meta)      Alt/Option
>     s (super)     Windows/Command
>     S (shift)     Shift
>
> Set keybinding style for copy/paste:
>
> [ ] default
>
>     M-w           Copy
>     C-y           Paste
>     C-w           Cut
>
> [ ] alternative
>
>     C-c           Copy
>     C-v           Paste
>     C-x           Cut
>
>
> [Next] [Skip]
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> [ ] Enable line numbers
>
> [ ] Use thin cursor
>
> [ ] Disable tool bar
>
> [ ] Disable scroll bar
>
>
> [Next] [Skip]
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Emacs has a powerful (but possibly unintuitive) undo system, where
> undo operations themselves are recorded in the undo history, and redo
> is done by undoing an previous undo operation.
>
> Set undo style:
>
> [ ] default
>
>     C-/           Undo
>
> [ ] linear
>
>     C-/           Undo
>     C-?           Redo
>
> [ ] alternative
>
>     C-z           Undo
>     C-S-z         Redo
>
>
> [Next] [Skip]
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Additional packages:
>
> [ ] Company
>
>       Popup completion.
>       <gif>
>
>
> [ ] Ivy
>
>       Completion for opening files, executing commands, etc.
>       <gif>
>
>
> [ ] Expand-region
>
>       Incrementally expand selection.
>       <gif>
>
>
> [ ] Which-key
>
>       Shows possible keybindings.
>       <gif>
>
>
> [Finish]  You can re-run this guide by M-x beginner-guide RET
>
>
> Yuan
>
>
>
>

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