Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[ndame]

> The article is here:
>
> https://download.blender.org/documentation/pdf/LXF204.feat_3d.5cjt.pdf

That's not it, google found a version, some excerpts:

"Blender developers – would defend the software’s defiantly idiosyncratic UI on the grounds that ‘different doesn’t always mean worse’. Blender could do everything that other 3D packages could, they argued, and given a little time, it was possible to adapt your old working methods to a new combination of icons, keyboard shortcuts and menu commands. But for artists working in visual effects or game development – notoriously high-pressure industries, particularly when deadlines are looming – time is at a premium. Many people who might otherwise have loved Blender got no further than its splash screen"

...

"Others struck at the heart of Blender veterans’ sense of identity and even their muscle memory. In almost every other 3D application, you leftclick to select things. In Blender, prior to 2.80, you rightclicked by default. Supporters argued that it made for a faster, more precise workflow – but it was also alien to artists coming to Blender from other software."

...


https://www.pressreader.com/australia/linux-format/20191217/281745566267591



There are obvious similarities with Emacs' current situation.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:

>> The article is here:
>>
>> https://download.blender.org/documentation/pdf/LXF204.feat_3d.5cjt.pdf
>
> That's not it, google found a version, some excerpts:
>
> "Blender developers – would defend the software’s defiantly idiosyncratic UI on
> the grounds that ‘different doesn’t always mean worse’. Blender could do
> everything that other 3D packages could, they argued, and given a little time,
> it was possible to adapt your old working methods to a new combination of icons,
> keyboard shortcuts and menu commands. But for artists working in visual effects
> or game development – notoriously high-pressure industries, particularly when
> deadlines are looming – time is at a premium. Many people who might otherwise
> have loved Blender got no further than its splash screen"
>
> ...
>
> "Others struck at the heart of Blender veterans’ sense of identity and even
> their muscle memory. In almost every other 3D application, you leftclick to
> select things. In Blender, prior to 2.80, you rightclicked by default.
> Supporters argued that it made for a faster, more precise workflow – but it was
> also alien to artists coming to Blender from other software."
>
> ...
>
>
> https://www.pressreader.com/australia/linux-format/20191217/281745566267591
>
>
>
> There are obvious similarities with Emacs' current situation.
The link from ndame links to is the correct article. I didn't know it
was avialable online.

I forgott to say unfortunately, I am sorry; Linux Format is a payed printed
magazine, so you have to either be a subscriber to read the full article
online, or to buy a paper copy of the magazine. I think it is worth, but
it's a personal choice.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 27.04.2020 20:50, ndame wrote:
> 
>> The article is here:
>>
>> https://download.blender.org/documentation/pdf/LXF204.feat_3d.5cjt.pdf
> 
> That's not it, google found a version, some excerpts:

Yeah, the above is a 5-year old article. But it was interesting too, and 
especially the emphasis on animators generally needing dedicated 
training to start being productive.

> "Blender developers – would defend the software’s defiantly idiosyncratic UI on the grounds that ‘different doesn’t always mean worse’. Blender could do everything that other 3D packages could, they argued, and given a little time, it was possible to adapt your old working methods to a new combination of icons, keyboard shortcuts and menu commands. But for artists working in visual effects or game development – notoriously high-pressure industries, particularly when deadlines are looming – time is at a premium. Many people who might otherwise have loved Blender got no further than its splash screen"
> 
> ...
> 
> "Others struck at the heart of Blender veterans’ sense of identity and even their muscle memory. In almost every other 3D application, you leftclick to select things. In Blender, prior to 2.80, you rightclicked by default. Supporters argued that it made for a faster, more precise workflow – but it was also alien to artists coming to Blender from other software."
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> https://www.pressreader.com/australia/linux-format/20191217/281745566267591

That's a very good read. Another quote, not much relevant for Emacs, but 
it could make for a good promo material for FSF:

“We don’t see open source as free. We see it as free-ing,” says Bell. 
“You could cer­tainly save money if you wanted to, but I see it as an 
op­por­tu­nity to take a por­tion of the bud­get and re­di­rect it to 
our core soft­ware. We truly hope that oth­ers will take the 
de­vel­op­ment work we’ve put in and push it fur­ther.”

> There are obvious similarities with Emacs' current situation.

I also see a lot of parallels between the programs themselves.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[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. ]]]

  > https://www.pressreader.com/australia/linux-format/20191217/281745566267591

That page doesn't contain the article, only nonfree Javascript code which
we should not lead people to run.

  > That's not it, google found a version, some excerpts:

Since you read the article, could you tell us in which year Blender
changed interfaces?  And can someone find, somewhere, a list of what
the changes were, and show us that list?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[ndame]

>
> Since you read the article, could you tell us in which year Blender
> changed interfaces?

In version 2.80 in 2019.


The relevant part:


A game-changing release

When Roosendaal first proposed Blender 2.80 in 2015, it was as a “workflow release” – a chance to stop focusing on new features for a while in favour of bigger structural goals. At the time, he thought the work might take “9-12 months”. It turned out it would take three years longer.

But those extra years would buy the Blender Foundation time to address some of the real drawbacks in the software: issues that prevented artists used to commercial 3D applications from switching over to Blender. The biggest was the user interface. Before 2.80, diehard Blender users – including many

Blender developers – would defend the software’s defiantly idiosyncratic UI on the grounds that ‘different doesn’t always mean worse’. Blender could do everything that other 3D packages could, they argued, and given a little time, it was possible to adapt your old working methods to a new combination of icons, keyboard shortcuts and menu commands.

But for artists working in visual effects or game development – notoriously high-pressure industries, particularly when deadlines are looming – time is at a premium. Many people who might otherwise have loved Blender got no further than its splash screen. Some of the changes made in Blender 2.80 were cosmetic: the interface has a more industry-standard dark grey colour scheme, designed to prevent it from drawing the user’s eye away from the 3D scene on display in the viewport. Others struck at the heart of

Blender veterans’ sense of identity and even their muscle memory. In almost every other 3D application, you leftclick to select things. In Blender, prior to 2.80, you rightclicked by default. Supporters argued that it made for a faster, more precise workflow – but it was also alien to artists coming to Blender from other software.

Other changes were intended specifically to help artists make that transition. A toggleable ‘keymap’ switched Blender’s keyboard shortcuts from their traditional settings to ones more familiar to users of other 3D applications: tools like Pixologic’s Zbrush, used for sculpting organic characters, Autodesk’s Maya, used for general-purpose modelling and animation, and Sidefx’s Houdini, used for creating physically based effects like fire, water and smoke.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[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. ]]]

  > A game-changing release

Thanks for showing us that.

I see the logic of this -- but I think that trying to do this with
Emacs would be a more drastic UI change than the one Blender made,
because the keyboard is the principal interface rather than a
secondary one.

At the same time I don't think we could get a lot of boost in usags
from it.  Blender was the only libre video editing program competing
with proprietary programs which, as a side issue, very expensive too.
By contrast, there are already other libre text editors.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > A game-changing release
>
> Thanks for showing us that.
>
> I see the logic of this -- but I think that trying to do this with
> Emacs would be a more drastic UI change than the one Blender made,
> because the keyboard is the principal interface rather than a
> secondary one.

Hope you don't take it personal but you are wrong about keyboard in 3D
applications. Both keyboard and mouse are primary input methods,
and 3D modellers/animators etc are very religious about their workflow
and habits. They are very habitual creatures to their shorctuts, just
like Emacs users.

> Emacs would be a more drastic UI change than the one Blender made,

Njah, they rewrote their GUI code almost completely. But anyway, would
that necessary be a bad thing?

You can still have Emacs traditional/classic/call-it-whatever
mode and other modes that emulate other text editors. It already exists
in Emacs, that is what evil & co does, there is CUA-mode etc.

Back in times, 1970-something, when you and your friends created Emacs,
there were probably no standard, world-wide, applicaiton-wide
terminology, workflow etc. At least it was different from what it is
today. Emacs is, like Blender, an application made before certain
standards even existed, but the world has changed, standards/habits has
become established and they are somewhat different than what Emacs uses.

It is just a surface anyway, and I am quite sure that veterans used to
Emacs would have no difficult time to keep their habits even if Emacs
changed some default terminology, shortcuts, looks and even interaction
mode. I know it is beating a dead horse, I have seen it being brought up
different times since I have started to use Emacs back in year '99 or there
around. It is just my personal opinion.

> At the same time I don't think we could get a lot of boost in usags
> from it.

Why? If you offerered a more polished "in-time" version of Emacs, I believe
Emacs is still superior as a tool to other editors/tools.

Emacs has quite some features that can be or are "killer" features,
that just has to be exposed a tad bit more. Shell/mail/dired/org are
probably ones, also a concept, search inteface to anything in Emacs
(pun intended - I think of anything/Helm as interaction model), easy
and tight integration with other tools and probably more.

All those things are already explorable and adaptable, ready to use,
but they need (somewhat) painfull and tedious assembling into the final
experience. Most people not familiar with Emacs are probably not aware
how to use it in more advanced way then just as a text editor with
"strange" keyboard shortcuts. They don't know what is available, what
they need to setup, and how, to get their imagined interaction model,
wofrklow, etc (iff they even have something already imagined).

I think Emacs is great, and choice is great! I value freedom foremost.
But as it is now, for many of modern features, choice is mandatory.

Emacs is already super-adaptable, it just needs a little bit more stuff
pre-integrated, turned on, and made a part of it and currage to make a
decision. Yes I love freedom, and I love to be able to tailor it to my
choice, but while I can make my choice between completion frameworks,
visual parts, shortcuts etc, people new to it have to look up all that
stuff, learn about it, search, spend time on configuring, testing
configuration and so on. It is that time consuming part that lots of
folks don't wanna do for various reasons.  It takes time to learn what
to setup and how to set it up. Many people are not willing or simply
can't spend that time.Many don't even care, they just want to have
something they can use. If their reserved words are blue or green, or if
symbol names are complited by language server or something else, they
probably don't care, people usually want just somethigni that works.

Make some more default choices, add some more modern functionality out
of the box, and let those who does not like defaults just re-configure
to whatever they want, they probably already do it anyway.

Question is also do you want those people who are unvilling to scratch
the surface and deep-dive into Emacs and spend time to learn it and
configure it, to use Emacs?

Well why not? More users means more momentum, more people contributing,
more cash to FSF (maybe :-)) etc, which results in Emacs and other FSF
software been even better, world realizing the power of open source
(I think it already did) and generaly promoting the FSF/Gnu ideals?
I believe that Emacs was, and probably still is the most advanced of
libre editors. Actually I don't see Emacs as a text editor longer,
but rather as a usefull tool for my every day computer interaction.

As a note, I know starter kits like Spacemacs, Prelude & Co are out
there, but somehow that does not seem to cut it.

> By contrast, there are already other libre text editors.

Why is that an argument if there are other libre text editors? Blender
was free to use for a long time before it become widely adopted. It wasn't
the kostenloss that made it widely adopted, it was when they turned it
into more in-time-with-standards (in combination with kostenloss) that
seems to helped most with wider adoption.

By the way, isn't evolution about adaptation? I mean even software has
to adapt, otherwise it becomes obsolete.

When we speak about Emacs and adoption, I think Emacs has actually got a
revival, compared to how I saw it used for 20 years ago, I think it is
quite a lot life about Emacs nowdays. There are people blogging, doing
videos, reddit seems quite active, the mailing list has become likea
spam :-), I don't remember it was active like this before, people are
writing new packages and so on. But compared to some other, slightly
less free offerings Emacs is not the most used/widespread tool. Yet :-).
Of course I dont' have any statistics, it is just a feeling I have, a
speculation based on what I see people talking about on the Internet.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 02.05.2020 18:52, Arthur Miller wrote:
> When we speak about Emacs and adoption, I think Emacs has actually got a
> revival, compared to how I saw it used for 20 years ago, I think it is
> quite a lot life about Emacs nowdays. There are people blogging, doing
> videos, reddit seems quite active, the mailing list has become likea
> spam:-), I don't remember it was active like this before, people are
> writing new packages and so on.

Was it package.el that did this? It sounds like the most likely culprit.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[ndame]

>
> You can still have Emacs traditional/classic/call-it-whatever
> mode and other modes that emulate other text editors.

Veterans said they don't like when emacs defaults change and they
have to modify their configs to go back to old defaults.

The solution discussed recently when if emacs is started without
config then it offers modern settings to the user can be a good workaround.

This may not work always, because I saw 1-2 line config files created
by a given *nix distribution, so in that case the check would
fail for new users.

So in addition the other suggestion about a big, conspicuous button added
to the splash screen should also be implemented. A button with text like
"I'm new to emacs, give me friendly settings!" which when pressed sets up
emacs to be similar to the usual standards.


> It already exists
> in Emacs, that is what evil & co does, there is CUA-mode etc.


Emacs should have keybinding-themes like in other editors which
offer various keybinding variants.  E.g in IntelliJ:

IntelliJ IDEA automatically selects a predefined keymap based on your environment. Make sure that it matches the OS you are using or select the one that matches shortcuts from another IDE or editor you are used to (for example, Eclipse or NetBeans).

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/configuring-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts.html


The tricky thing is these key-themes should be reflected in the documentation too, so,
for example, you couldn't have hardcoded keys in info, but rather info should be
an active document, that is, when it talks about keys invoking commands then
it should query the active bindings for the commands and show those to  present
a documentation which is consistent with the current keymap-theme.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 02.05.2020 18:52, Arthur Miller wrote:
>> When we speak about Emacs and adoption, I think Emacs has actually got a
>> revival, compared to how I saw it used for 20 years ago, I think it is
>> quite a lot life about Emacs nowdays. There are people blogging, doing
>> videos, reddit seems quite active, the mailing list has become likea
>> spam:-), I don't remember it was active like this before, people are
>> writing new packages and so on.
>
> Was it package.el that did this? It sounds like the most likely culprit.
I don't know; probably; it certainly helped. Melpa and github maybe have a
fingers there too. Maybe also millenial kids used to computers in the
look for customizable/better software? Need to work with "cloud"
(AWS/Azure) as well as with other devices (IoS/Android), probably made
some people switch to certain Unix like OS, or at least to work with
console which exposed them to terminal editors? I don't know, but it
seems like both Vi(m) & Emacs have got a revival lately.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 02.05.2020 20:00, Arthur Miller wrote:
> I don't know, but it
> seems like both Vi(m) & Emacs have got a revival lately.

That's true for FOSS editors in general, though. We didn't have so many 
good options before.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 02.05.2020 20:00, Arthur Miller wrote:
>> I don't know, but it
>> seems like both Vi(m) & Emacs have got a revival lately.
>
> That's true for FOSS editors in general, though. We didn't have so many good
> options before.

Indeed, seems as a general trend, we have never had so much FOSS
software in general, not just editos, but everything, from AI research
to Game Engines, 3D Editors, compilers, libraries, you name it. Seems
like world has realized power of open source, which is great.

RE: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Drew Adams]

> Question is also do you want those people who are
> unvilling to scratch the surface and deep-dive
> into Emacs and spend time to learn it and configure
> it, to use Emacs?

In general, I don't care.  "Those people" are really
all kinds of people, with different reluctance to
scratch the surface.

You can do a lot with Emacs without scratching any
surface.  Do I want someone who doesn't scratch the
surface at all to use Emacs?  Sure, if they like.
But if they don't like, that's OK too.

Emacs may not be for everyone, but I've seen all
kinds of people, including non-scratchers of all
sorts, come to use it productively, and even come
to love it.  Are there others who will never take
advantage of it or appreciate it?  Sure.

FWIW, I really do NOT think that anyone who's
been involved with Emacs development has little
care for newbies or for making Emacs flexible and
easy to use.

The opposite is the case - everyone I've ever see
take an interest in Emacs cares very much about
usability, discoverability, etc.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> FWIW, I really do NOT think that anyone who's
> been involved with Emacs development has little
> care for newbies or for making Emacs flexible and
> easy to use.

I do NOT think something like that either Drew, nor did
I state that, just to be clear. Emacs is a prime example of flexibility,
sure! I wrote, Emacs is super-adaptable. Ease of use can be debatable,
what is easy for you and me does not necessary mean easy for somebody else.

> The opposite is the case - everyone I've ever see
> take an interest in Emacs cares very much about
> usability, discoverability, etc.

I didn't say Eamcs devs don't care about it either, I am sorry if I sound
to you like that.

Usability, discoverability and other user friendliness have many faces.
What I tried to say, is that that Emacs might have used some kind of a
facelift to reflect more of a time we live in.

Yes, sure, there are examples were people have not scratched under the
surface of Emacs, and lots of people use it with out-of-the-box
settings. But it wasn't point that it is not possible, or that there are
no users who does not do something with Emacs. The point is that
many users are not finding Emacs that useful, and are probably not even
trying it or switching after very short period to something else because
of Emacs not conforming to some basic expectations they happened to have.

Sure, one can never please everyone, that is just how life is. No matter
how one make something or how good one try, there will always be someone
who will want it differently, but nowdays, there are some basics that
most software seems to follow, and some people seems to be lost of those
are not met.

RE: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Drew Adams]

> > FWIW, I really do NOT think that anyone who's
> > been involved with Emacs development has little
> > care for newbies or for making Emacs flexible and
> > easy to use.
> 
> I do NOT think something like that either Drew, nor did
> I state that, just to be clear. Emacs is a prime example of
> flexibility, sure! I wrote, Emacs is super-adaptable.
> Ease of use can be debatable, what is easy for you and me
> does not necessary mean easy for somebody else.

I wasn't saying anything about what you said,
beyond responding to your question:

 > Question is also do you want those people who are
 > unvilling to scratch the surface and deep-dive
 > into Emacs and spend time to learn it and configure
 > it, to use Emacs?

There's nothing personal in my answer to that
question.  It's a reasonable question.  And I
gave my honest answer to it - zero about you.

[OFFTOPIC] Free Software (was: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers)

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> I don't know, but it
>>> seems like both Vi(m) & Emacs have got a revival lately.
>> That's true for FOSS editors in general, though. We didn't have so many good
>> options before.
> Indeed, seems as a general trend, we have never had so much FOSS
> software in general, not just editos, but everything, from AI research
> to Game Engines, 3D Editors, compilers, libraries, you name it. Seems
> like world has realized power of open source, which is great.

Sadly, I believe this only applies to a particular subset of the uses
of computers.  Maybe we could describe it as the subset that applies to
desktop computers.  In the tablet/phone world, Free Software is
not nearly as prevalent (instead, in that sphere, the most prevalent is
freeware which is a name that mostly disappeared, replaced by the name
"free software").


        Stefan

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> > FWIW, I really do NOT think that anyone who's
>> > been involved with Emacs development has little
>> > care for newbies or for making Emacs flexible and
>> > easy to use.
>> 
>> I do NOT think something like that either Drew, nor did
>> I state that, just to be clear. Emacs is a prime example of
>> flexibility, sure! I wrote, Emacs is super-adaptable.
>> Ease of use can be debatable, what is easy for you and me
>> does not necessary mean easy for somebody else.
>
> I wasn't saying anything about what you said,
> beyond responding to your question:
>
>  > Question is also do you want those people who are
>  > unvilling to scratch the surface and deep-dive
>  > into Emacs and spend time to learn it and configure
>  > it, to use Emacs?
>
> There's nothing personal in my answer to that
> question.  It's a reasonable question.  And I
> gave my honest answer to it - zero about you.

Aha, OK, then I have slightly missunderstand what you ment. Sorry.

Re: [OFFTOPIC] Free Software

[Arthur Miller]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>>> I don't know, but it
>>>> seems like both Vi(m) & Emacs have got a revival lately.
>>> That's true for FOSS editors in general, though. We didn't have so many good
>>> options before.
>> Indeed, seems as a general trend, we have never had so much FOSS
>> software in general, not just editos, but everything, from AI research
>> to Game Engines, 3D Editors, compilers, libraries, you name it. Seems
>> like world has realized power of open source, which is great.
>
> Sadly, I believe this only applies to a particular subset of the uses
> of computers.  Maybe we could describe it as the subset that applies to
> desktop computers.  In the tablet/phone world, Free Software is
> not nearly as prevalent (instead, in that sphere, the most prevalent is
> freeware which is a name that mostly disappeared, replaced by the name
> "free software").
>
>
>         Stefan

True. I did have desktop software in mind when I wrote that.

RE: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Drew Adams]

> Aha, OK, then I have slightly missunderstand what you ment. Sorry.

No problem; thanks.  There are lots of strong
opinions & arguments being expressed.  That's
OK, as long as the opinions & arguments are
about the opinions & arguments. ;-)

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[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. ]]]

  > > Emacs would be a more drastic UI change than the one Blender made,

  > Njah, they rewrote their GUI code almost completely.

I think we are talking past each other.

I don't use Blender, I don't know the field of animation, and I could
be misunderstanding everything about it.  But I think that in Blender,
the command set is just an interface, whereas in Emacs, the commands
are what it is.

I think that animation is fundamentally more complex than text.  Not
just a little more complex, but enormously and deeply so.  I expect
Blender has a lot of very different and very complex things it can do
to the animation being edited.  So a Blender user would be thinking
all the time about which complex and sophisticated operation perse
wants to do next, and the commands to invoke the operation would be
secondary.

Whereas in Emacs, I think, we are focused on lots of commands to
do more-or-less transparent things with text.

							 But anyway, would
  > that necessary be a bad thing?

You can develop another interface to Emacs.  We could support it as an option,
but it would not be Emacs.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [OFFTOPIC] Free Software (was: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers)

[chad]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2182 bytes --]

On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 2:17 PM Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> >>> I don't know, but it
> >>> seems like both Vi(m) & Emacs have got a revival lately.
> >> That's true for FOSS editors in general, though. We didn't have so many
> good
> >> options before.
> > Indeed, seems as a general trend, we have never had so much FOSS
> > software in general, not just editos, but everything, from AI research
> > to Game Engines, 3D Editors, compilers, libraries, you name it. Seems
> > like world has realized power of open source, which is great.
>
> Sadly, I believe this only applies to a particular subset of the uses
> of computers.  Maybe we could describe it as the subset that applies to
> desktop computers.  In the tablet/phone world, Free Software is
> not nearly as prevalent (instead, in that sphere, the most prevalent is
> freeware which is a name that mostly disappeared, replaced by the name
> "free software").
>

I agree in general, bit things aren't necessarily as stark as they might
seem; there are a fair (I originally said "reasonable" and then rejected
that implication) number of iOS and Android packages that make their source
code available for all to see and maybe-use. The troubles tend to arise
where the tools for building and installing that software is closed, and
also in the steady move towards "walled gardens" where a user needs to jump
through extradoridinary hoops to install and run self-made software on
their own devices. As a practical matter, the rough shape of Android app
security has resulted in strong movements towards ever more proprietary
walls for a large set of users, the platform maintainers (Google and the
various OEMs), and many of the software producers (because "knock-off"
versions of popular software with added spyware/exploit code is so common).
At least in the U.S., the hegemony of the mobile carrier networks makes
free mobile software very difficult. From my own perspective of hobby-level
hacking on mobile hardware since the mid 90's, it feels a bit like "one
step forward, two steps back, and then the goalposts get moved forward 20
meters".

Sorry for the tangent; thanks for the FSF & GNU.
~Chad

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Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[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. ]]]

  > Seems
  > like world has realized power of open source, which is great.

If people have realized the usefulness of the existing free programs,
that is good.

If people realize the value of the _freedom_ that free software gives,
and learn to demand this freedom, that would be GREAT.

Using the term "open source" tends to cover up that crucial point.
For the free software movement, that is self-defeating.  So please
let's make an effort to call our work "free", "libre", or both -- not
"open".

See https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
for more explanation of the difference between free software and open
source.  See also https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler for
Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > > Emacs would be a more drastic UI change than the one Blender made,
>
>   > Njah, they rewrote their GUI code almost completely.
>
> I think we are talking past each other.
Easy happends on the Internet, but I don't think we are, at least not
completely.

> be misunderstanding everything about it.  But I think that in Blender,
> the command set is just an interface, whereas in Emacs, the commands
> are what it is.

> You can develop another interface to Emacs.  We could support it as an option,
> but it would not be Emacs.

It probably depends on what you define as a command as well as what you
see as Emacs identity. If you identify Emacs as a set of shortcuts and
terminology then changig C-x C-f to C-o and cutting instead of'killing'
stuff will probably introde on it's identity. I personally don't identify
Emacs as a bunch of shortcuts. To me the identity lies more deeply under
the surface, and the outer surface is just a handle to operate Emacs.
The beauty and practicality of Emacs is that handle can be easily exchanged.

> I think that animation is fundamentally more complex than text.  Not
> just a little more complex, but enormously and deeply so.  I expect
> Blender has a lot of very different and very complex things it can do
> to the animation being edited.  So a Blender user would be thinking
> all the time about which complex and sophisticated operation perse
> wants to do next, and the commands to invoke the operation would be
> secondary.
>
> Whereas in Emacs, I think, we are focused on lots of commands to
> do more-or-less transparent things with text.
I am neither modeller nor animator myself, so I am not an expert either.
I don't think though the complexity matter so much, at least not in
context of this discussion.

Regardless of what complex operations an animator would think of in a 3D
application and what an Emacs user would think in an Editor, the
priniple is same: one think in terms of what one would do to a content
one works with. The commands to invoke those are secondary. When I
write this email, and type a misstake, I think in terms of moving the
cursor to correct place and deleting characters etc. Which shortcuts I
use, or mouse movements, etc, is secondary. If I wrote this in browser
instead of Emacs, I would involve different set of shortcuts but they
would execute "same" set of commands. Even though those commands are named
differently and implemented differently (different programming language,
environment etc) I still think in same logical terms of moving cursor
and replacing characters.

So if newcomers open Emacs and want to do simple things like
cut/copy/paste, open file etc, something that has very similar set of
shortcuts in very many applications nowdays, they would just type a
misstake in their content in Emacs, which probably leads to frustration.
Then they will open fine manual and stat searching for cut and copy and
paste and found nothing because we call it differen around here :-).
OK, I am carricaturing, it is not really true at least not for those simple
cases, but I hope it illustrates what I mean.

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > Seems
>   > like world has realized power of open source, which is great.
>
> If people have realized the usefulness of the existing free programs,
> that is good.
>
> If people realize the value of the _freedom_ that free software gives,
> and learn to demand this freedom, that would be GREAT.
>
> Using the term "open source" tends to cover up that crucial point.
> For the free software movement, that is self-defeating.  So please
> let's make an effort to call our work "free", "libre", or both -- not
> "open".
>
> See https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
> for more explanation of the difference between free software and open
> source.  See also https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler for
> Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.

Yes of course RMS, I am completely with you when it comes to free
software and freedom. I definitely appreciate all you have done
through history, not less initiating everything.

It is just that sometimes, in everyday speech we don't always use
official, full, long names for stuff or hard distinctions because
we tend to shortcut things in speech. It happends in all languages,
fields of human activity etc. So we don't always say GNU/Linux, we
say Linux even when we mean GNU/Linux, just as we don't always say
Microsoft Windows but just Windows, or Apple OSX but just OSX etc.
Same thing happened there, I said open source as an umbrella term,
with no wishes diminish value of free software or not being aware
of distinction.

As a side not, personally I think that once most people realize
the power of community collaboration and openess, which might be
happening, maybe there will even not be a need for enforcing
"freeiness" as with GPL3, just as we don't need a law to enforce
other things in life when they become peoples identity becuase
people wish to do those things anyway. But maybe it is just utopia
thinking, don't know, but I think both "open source" and "free software"
is on the raise (just my personal opinion).

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[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. ]]]

  > It is just that sometimes, in everyday speech we don't always use
  > official, full, long names for stuff

Since "free software" is only two charactes longer than "open source",
how about making the effort to acquire that habit?  It will help our
cause, and once you learn the habit, you will hardly mind those extra
characters.

  > say Linux even when we mean GNU/Linux, just as we don't always say
  > Microsoft Windows but just Windows, or Apple OSX but just OSX etc.

They are similar in being shortenings, but there is a crucial difference.

Saying just "Windows" does not lead to forgetting that it comes from Microsoft.
Saying just "OSX" does not lead to forgetting that it comes from Apple.
There is no reason to make an effort to avoid those shortenings.

But saying just "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux" misrepresents who
developed it.  That hampers what the GNU Project can achieve.  So how
about making the effort to avoid that particular shortening?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Nikita Mogilevsky]

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Hello, folks. I'd like to throw my two cents in as a relatively new user.
I've been using emacs for org-mode, coding, and irc on and off for a few
years.

The display interface:
There is already a thread about emacs' square appearance, but many features
of emacs would benefit from looking modernized. I agree with RMS that emacs
will need some reimagined graphics library implementation to make that
possible.

Customize:
This feature is conceptually simple but I found it almost hostile to
interact with. Between, states and unintuitive input fields. I found it
hard to understand what many functions and variables were meant to do or
represent. The documentation for these values showed elisp, so I quickly
transitioned away from customize. I don't know what I would improve here
but I think that many new users are guided to this feature and I don't
recommend them to play with it from personal experiences.

How should we poll new users and their initial interactions with emacs?
Would a setup wizard be helpful for common bindings like modern kill-yank
equivalents? While the philosophy funnels towards abandoning mouse cursors
and buttons what would be intuitive features for transitioning from that
kind of behavior?

On Tue, May 5, 2020, 21:47 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> 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. ]]]
>
>   > It is just that sometimes, in everyday speech we don't always use
>   > official, full, long names for stuff
>
> Since "free software" is only two charactes longer than "open source",
> how about making the effort to acquire that habit?  It will help our
> cause, and once you learn the habit, you will hardly mind those extra
> characters.
>
>   > say Linux even when we mean GNU/Linux, just as we don't always say
>   > Microsoft Windows but just Windows, or Apple OSX but just OSX etc.
>
> They are similar in being shortenings, but there is a crucial difference.
>
> Saying just "Windows" does not lead to forgetting that it comes from
> Microsoft.
> Saying just "OSX" does not lead to forgetting that it comes from Apple.
> There is no reason to make an effort to avoid those shortenings.
>
> But saying just "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux" misrepresents who
> developed it.  That hampers what the GNU Project can achieve.  So how
> about making the effort to avoid that particular shortening?
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>
>

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Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[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. ]]]

  > Customize:
  > This feature is conceptually simple but I found it almost hostile to
  > interact with. Between, states and unintuitive input fields. I found it
  > hard to understand what many functions and variables were meant to do or
  > represent. The documentation for these values showed elisp, so I quickly
  > transitioned away from customize. I don't know what I would improve here
  > but I think that many new users are guided to this feature and I don't
  > recommend them to play with it from personal experiences.

I agree that it has big problems.

New users could tell us some aspects they notice as difficult.  I
don't think we can expect them to tell us what would make it better
for them -- not in general.

All I can suggest is for someone to try implementing a nicer interface
and invite some new users to try it, saying which aspects they find
less than ideal.  Then repeat.

Perhaps we should have separate customize code for graphical
displays.  I expect most new users use those.  If it doesn't have
to share code with the tty interface, it could be improved more.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)