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

[Cthun <cthun_117@qmail.net.au>]

On 23/02/2011 6:46 PM, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> Cthun<cthun_117@qmail.net.au>  writes:
>
>> On 23/02/2011 12:15 PM, Rafe Kettler wrote:
>>> You must be a Windows user. You must also not be an Emacs power user
>>
>> If by that you mean "you must be a normal, sane human being", then you
>> are correct. :)
>
> For Heinlein, a normal, sane human being had to be able to compute an
> integral, otherwise Heinlein didn't consider that he should be allowed
> to vote.

What does your classic pontification have to do with Lisp, Bourguignon?

> You'll excuse us, but when you post on gnu.emacs.help, comp.emacs, and
> comp.lang.lisp, it is expected that a normal, sane human being be
> defined as being able to use emacs and program in emacs lisp.

Classic unsubstantiated and erroneous claim.

>> Hardly likely. For one thing those require extra keys held down, and
>> for another, which one of them corresponds to which arrow? On my
>> keyboard at least those are arranged like this:
>>
>> .........p
>> ...f.....
>>   ....bn.
>
> This doesn't matter, because emacs users don't work at the low level.

What does your classic unsubstantiated and erroneous claim have to do 
with Lisp, Bourguignon?

> You can expect an amobea to be able to direct itself up right down and
> left.  But when we edit with emacs, we use higher level notions, such as
> (n)ext, (p)revious, (f)orward, (b)ackward, x {character, line,
> paragraph, sexp}.  We don't edit characters, we edit structured sources
> symbolically.

Then why do you use a text editor and not a properly-designed IDE, 
Bourguignon? A text editor is by definition designed for editing 
amorphous strings of ASCII text, Bourguignon. If you want higher level 
constructs to be recognized you should be using NetBeans, Bourguignon. 
It has operations for refactoring and working with units from 
identifiers all the way up to methods and whole classes, and, with 
Enclojure, for working with functions and sexps, Bourguignon.