From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Mathias Dahl Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: key mapping convention Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:56:31 +0100 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1164624407 25532 80.91.229.2 (27 Nov 2006 10:46:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:46:47 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Nov 27 11:46:45 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Goe0V-0001Sd-Rr for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:46:42 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Goe0S-00058Z-8B for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 27 Nov 2006 05:46:36 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 48 Original-X-Trace: individual.net 4LE0RqSrdWAnXCr/j6yLHwVcNnVXw+4asTbUo70sx3H6kGqAzD User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.90 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:K76WhKsgt6bsYo/ULzkPlvaqWT4= Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:143415 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:39031 Archived-At: Christopher Küttner writes: > I am using the mighty Editor since a few months now and I must make > a decision. Should I tweak the Editor to work like my operating > system, that means using CUA and so on. Or should I tweak the > operating system such that it works like the Editor (eg C-y as > "paste" ect)? > > I want to decide this once for a lifetime. Which is the way to go? > Which way is better? Where is the origin of the way Emacs does it? > Any thoughts, scientific or religious are welcome. When I started using Emacs on Windows I was lucky; I had used Oracle's Sql*Plus tool a lot and to copy and paste in there C-Insert and S-Insert was the keys to use. And I happily noticed that while C-c and C-v did not work as I expected, the C-Insert and S-Insert did. Back then (1997, using Windows 3.11 or Windows NT 3.51) most other shortcuts was not as "standard" as they are today so I did not care thet C-s did not save or that C-o did not open a new file. Everything that was common to all apps (apart from Sql*Plus and Emacs, and MS-DOS windows...) was C-v, C-c and C-x. Back then I put save and open and similar on the F-keys for easy access, so I never bothered to learn the standard keys in Emacs. But over the years I learnt the standard keys, if only for situations where I did not have access to my .emacs file. Today I am happily using C-x C-s, C-y, M-w etc, in Emacs, but Windows' standard keys in Windows, and 95 % of the time, my brain handles it well and does not mess up. In some way it knows where I am and DTRT. I recently got a friend trying Emacs on Windows. He was very reluctant at first, he even made a try some year ago and gave up (that time he decided to learn vanilla Emacs bindings). This year he tried again, now with a different mindset; he would try to make bindings and other things he was used to from other editors the same in Emacs, so he enabled CUA-mode and pc-selection-mode and others, and he now seem to have gotten over the largest hirdle in Emacs, "that everything is strange", and has actually started to see the benefits of using it, all cool features etc. It's hard to suggest what you should do, I guess it depends on what OS you use. Under GNU/Linux you will have a better chance getting the OS work like Emacs, especially if you live inside Bash and similar tools. Under Windows I find it is hard to do this (yes I know about that Japanese app that tries to emulate Emacs keybindings all over the OS). Good luck!