Re: Default Emacs keybindings (was: Re: Menu suggestion)

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Emacs is primarily for superusers.  In my vision of the GNU system,
> we should change GNOME so that it presents Emacs as the editor,

My GNOME uses Emacs as an Editor (actually, mostly emacsclient):
that's easily configurable.

> and GNOME programs should offer Emacs key bindings wherever they
> could be used.

Basic Emacs keybindings are pretty prevalent.

But I would like to stress a point you make: "Emacs is primarily for
superusers".  A superuser will always be required to learn the editors
he has to maintain, support and explain for the users of the systems
he is a superuser of.  As long as the superuser can't with a good
conscience throw Emacs at his users, he is not free to use the editor
he prefers.

If somebody asks me about a text manipulation problem, and I tell him
"just use this one-liner in Emacs" and he says "Forget it.  I don't
have a week to spare.  How do I do this in KEdit?", this ultimately
forces me to acquire skills with inferior tools in order to kludge
along.

And there are quite a few things that can only reasonably be done with
Emacs.  So I have a vested interest in moving Emacs to a state where
one can throw it at a newbie without preconfiguration and can hope for
a tolerable balance of achieved tasks and incited frustration even on
early parts of the learning curve.  The question "is it really worth
it?" should, if possible, not come up again and again.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum