From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Uday S Reddy Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: RE: Key bindings proposal Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 10:52:51 +0100 Message-ID: <19545.14451.62000.682223@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <19534.1494.627000.357123@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <19537.40472.267000.563053@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <176EDAD3B9E54E39870FA3F84A5DDF3C@us.oracle.com> <19542.56658.583000.394397@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <19544.1015.468000.280770@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <87lj8nsndb.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1280915797 19058 80.91.229.12 (4 Aug 2010 09:56:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 09:56:37 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Uday S Reddy , Drew Adams , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Aug 04 11:56:32 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ogai8-0000hq-9A for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:56:32 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:60470 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ogai7-0005y9-GV for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:56:31 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=55772 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ogaf3-0003dp-KN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:53:27 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ogaew-0003yy-1i for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:53:21 -0400 Original-Received: from sun61.bham.ac.uk ([147.188.128.150]:52226) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ogaev-0003yX-RM for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:53:14 -0400 Original-Received: from [147.188.128.127] (helo=bham.ac.uk) by sun61.bham.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Ogaes-0001FN-Ns; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:53:10 +0100 Original-Received: from mx1.cs.bham.ac.uk ([147.188.192.53]) by bham.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ogaes-0002xT-Dy; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:53:10 +0100 Original-Received: from gromit.cs.bham.ac.uk ([147.188.193.16] helo=MARUTI.cs.bham.ac.uk) by mx1.cs.bham.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.51) id 1Ogaes-0005NU-6a; Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:53:10 +0100 In-Reply-To: <87lj8nsndb.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> X-Mailer: VM 8.1.92a under 23.2.1 [EmacsW32 Version 1.58 2010-08-02] (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:128218 Archived-At: Stephen J. Turnbull writes: > Seems unlikely to me. If keyboard accelerators were so important, > those users would all at least try XEmacs, which has integrated > keyboard accelerators for a decade or so. In fact, a *lot* of effort > was put into making XEmacs look and feel more familiar to the "new new > user crowd" around the turn of the century: menu accelerators, > sticky modifiers, tab controls, progress gauges, shifted motion > extends selection, and on Windows, native dialogs for file selection, > antialiased fonts, copy/cut/paste integration with the Windows > clipboard, and a proper printer device.[1] And, believe me that all of these features were indeed quite useful to the new users. I recall now that it was XEmacs that we had set up in the labs and it was this that I had observed the students using in ways quite different from me. I had tried to get a few of the smarter ones to use the key bindings, and they tried things like C-o and C-s and gave up. If you already had keyboard accelerators of menus in 2001, well, thank you very much for it! But, it still requires extra RET key strokes to confirm selections. That is what I characterized as inefficient in my previous post, i.e., it is not good enough to serve as a substitute for key bindings. Coming back to the students, the vast majority of them switched to IDEs by the time they reached their final year. So, while we had done our bit by introducing them to Emacs, Emacs wasn't able to retain them due to its limitations. In this sense, the previous thread was right in focusing on the IDE support. > But I've never seen a huge flood of new XEmacs users, and *no* new > contributors, from that crowd. The new users are mostly the kind of > folk who read software manuals for fun (or to pass the time when > they're sitting where the sun don't shine). And the new contributors > all read the manuals. You are obviously right about that. However, I don't agree with the conclusion. The user base is still needed to motivate contributors to find it worthwhile to come forward. Mozilla and Eclipse have armies of contributors, not because they have great manuals but because they have large user bases. > > And, Emacs has to fit in. > > Why? Because, otherwise, you raise the barrier to entry so high that only a small minority of potential users will be able to get through. Cheers, Uday PS: Sorry that I haven't gotten around to replying to your other posts. But I am thinking...