Re: Default Emacs keybindings

[Stefan Daschek <noniq-usenet@noniq.at>]

storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> Could we have some comments from users of CUA, please!

I use CUA, however ... my .emacs contains (setq cua-enable-cua-keys
nil). That's because I've been using S-Del, C-Ins and S-Ins for cut,
copy, and paste respectively since the old days of Borland C++ 3.1
running under MS DOS 5. Since those days I'm used to selecting text by
holding the shift key and then using the cursor keys (interestingly
enough even my current mobile phone, a nokia 7650, uses this
convention - holding down a modifier key and moving the cursor - for
selecting text).

Those shortcuts still work in (almost) all applications under Windows
or KDE/Gnome, in my favourite terminal emulator (PuTTY) they are even
the only way to do copy&paste from the keyboard.

Of course there is a drawback: S-Del, C-Ins, and S-Ins, as well as
shifted cursor movement do not work in emacs -nw. That's why I find
myself constantly using Tramp for editing remote files. I do use Emacs
remotely over ssh, but only for quite simple editing tasks.

As far as "learning emacs" is concerned: When I started using Emacs,
among the first things I did was enabling pc-selection-mode, finding
out about CUA, and defining a bunch of keybindings that are common
under standard Windows applications (e.g. C-s for save-buffer, M-F4
for save-buffers-kill-emacs, etc.). I did that not because I wanted
Emacs to be like any other Windows application, but just to make it
possible for me to learn Emacs gradually. After all, I had to get my
work done, and as I had decided that the only way of really learning
Emacs is to really use it, I had to get my work done with Emacs. Even
with all the customizations I did the first weeks of using Emacs were
quite hard and sometimes frustrating for me, many things did not work
as I expected and I felt less productive than before. But as time went
by I gradually learned about "The Emacs Way of doing it" and so I got
rid of many of those "backward-compatibility" customizations -- not
all at once, but bit by bit -- and started using all those great
unique features of Emacs. 

Nowadays I sometimes find myself pressing C-x C-s to save a document
in Powerpoint or Excel ... :)

My point is: I think it's neither possible nor sensible to learn Emacs
from scratch if you have already some experience with other "standard"
applications (and nowadays it could be quite hard to find someone who
hasn't this experiences). In Emacs' default configuration almost
nothing works as one would expect it, and so the possibility of
getting frustrated and never have a look at Emacs again is quite high.
However, what does work quite well is to start using Emacs almost like
a standard Windows/Gnome/KDE/MacOS application and then gradually
learn about the powerful Emacs features.

I think Emacs should encourage new users willing to learn Emacs as
much as possible. Maybe it would be a good idea to implement something
like a "First-time-user's wizard"? This wizard could guide a new user
through several basic (but important) steps of customizing. For
example, it could ask the user something like "Enable C-x/C-c/C-v
shortcuts for copy&paste?" Together with this question Emacs should
display a short explanation that (and how) enabling this option will
interfere with the standard Emacs keybindings and how to turn it off
again etc. 

I'm not sure about what other questions this "wizard" should ask,
maybe it would be necessary to make a survey among Emacs-"newbies" to
find out.

Okay enough for now, any comments appreciated :)

ciao,
noniq