Re: Rapidly navigating buffers using search

[despen@verizon.net]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> despen@verizon.net writes:
>
>> Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Jul 7, 3:25 am, Jonathan Groll <li...@groll.co.za> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, this is something that I didn't realised until now, and have
>>>> been using emacs for a couple of years... and it is right there in the
>>>> manual under "basics of incremental search" too.
>>>
>>> same here. I started to use emacs daily since 1998, and i didn't
>>> realize that Enter will exit the search and leave the cursor at the
>>> current location untill 2007 or so. I've always just used left/right
>>> arrow. (and a year or two later, i also found out that it is right in
>>> the manual. These happened only when i started to get more involved
>>> in writing a emacs tutorial)
>>>
>>> this situation of us using emacs for 5 or 10 years and often found
>>> something basics we don't know about. I think that means there's
>>> something wrong with the manual.
>>
>> There's nothing wrong with the manual.
>> That makes no sense, you just said the information is in the manual.
>
> I think the point was that the manual was not deficient concerning the
> information it provides, but in not making Xah Lee want to read it.

Well, he should say what he means.

:)

> In a way, it is a losing battle.

Many people will get to a level of proficiency and stop being curious.
I don't see a big problem, if they don't want to be power users,
so be it.
I think it's usually the same people that say they don't have
enough time to learn new things.

There are so many ways to access the "excellent manual" that it's
almost ridiculous.

One can type "^s ^h m" and get a whole lot of good info on isearch.
Some people will realize that they've got a whole screen full of
information and they should periodically go back and read it again
because the whole thing is not going to sink in at once.