Re: What's your favourite *under_publicized* editing feature ofEmacs?

[Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>]

On Feb 24, 9:48 am, "Eric Schulte" <schulte.e...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Xah,
>
> I just read your "modernizing Emacs" page [1] and I wonder, have you
> looked at the "Emacs Starter Kit" [2] (or /shameless-plug/ my literate
> version of the same [3]).  I think that by being distributed as a
> configuration for GNU emacs such `starter-kits' could serve as a good
> place to test and/or prove the utility of eventual changes to GNU emacs.
>
> Have you considered wrapping your modernization suggestions up into such
> a starter kit?  It seems that if such a kit gained popularity it would
> raise the chances of general Emacs adoption.
>
> Also, more pursuant to the points in your previous email, I wonder if
> you can recommend a good set of key-bindings for common commands such as
> cursor movement, file save-open-close, buffer-movement etc...
>
> Cheers -- Eric
>
> as a side note, I've been using Emacs for ~5 years, and over the last
> year have developed hand pains which were greatly relieved by using a
> Kinesis keyboard.
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization.html
>
> [2]  https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit/tree
>
> [3]  http://eschulte.github.com/emacs-starter-kit/

hi Eric,

i think several alt emacs distributions all does that.

Lennart's EmacsW32+Emacs does that for Windows.

my humble ErgoEmacs does it.

David Reitter's AquamacEmacs does it.

all these by default have keybindings that's radically different from
GNU Emacs. (in Lennart's EmacsW32 you have to turn it on.) They also
add various UI improvements, and lots of other packages to make it
more easier to use or more powerful.

i know that EmacsW32 and AquamacsEmacs are quite popular too. (my
guess is that their combined user is more than the number of GNU emacs
users counting all from linux distros.)

from what i've seen in GNU emacs mailing list, any little suggestion
about incorporating any UI change into GNU Emacs is met with major
resistance and debate. Almost everytime, giant fireball blows up in
the list. I don't know if that's good or bad, for FSF or for the
world, but that's what i've seen. (both Lennart and Reitter are on the
list as accepted contributors)

... Nice going with Kinesis.  I'd love one too.

i haven't looked into what's in emacs starter kit much...

http://eschulte.github.com/emacs-starter-kit/

heard it around in reddit etc now and then.

btw, why would people use it? seems complex.

 Xah ∑ http://xahlee.org/