Re: emacs-w3m question

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Paul!

On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 11:29:50AM +0100, Paul R wrote:
> Hello, 

> And french president, currently European Union president for 2 months
> more, recently gave a speech in which he said that he does not want to
> leave this european seat when time comes (IIRC, Tchek Republic is
> supposed to take over after France in january ). He argued that given
> the "current crisis", the european presidency ought to be strong, very
> wise and skilled, hence he is the only one able to do the job (still
> according to him). Cock really is a good emblem for our country, as it
> is the only known animal that keeps singing even with both foot in his
> own poo :)

Ah, yes, politicians!  I suspect Monsieur S. will be told that, come
Hogmanay, his time's up.

> Alan> But we've had this discussion several times. Modern isn't
> Alan> necessarily better. Modern is easier for newbies familiar with
> Alan> other programs to learn, but there's no evidence that, once
> Alan> learnt, it's any better than the classic Emacs UI. Do you address
> Alan> this matter anywhere in your online essays? My own experience is
> Alan> that Emacs's classic UI is much better. One reason to believe
> Alan> Emacs UI should be superior is that it was developed by the people
> Alan> who use it, for their own use.

> Although I agree with that, I think it is important to keep in mind
> that emacs frighten a lot of people when they first try it, and a lot
> of those people may drop it forever because of this first impression.
> I think newcomers are young and have time to realize what bindings are
> convenients or not in everyday use, and emacs should not impose, by
> default, a map that makes it practicaly unusable to anybody coming from
> the "CUA world". Yes, they can learn. No, they don't want to learn
> before trying, and I can understand that.

Yes, this is a difficult problem.  The other side is, that if you don't
encourage newbies to try the classic Emacs keybindings, they're going to
be stuck at the CUA level for ever, hence they'll miss out.  This has
been discussed on the Emacs development mailing list at great length, and
there has been great passion displayed on both sides.  ;-)  I don't think
there is a good solution to the problem.  FWIW, Transient Mark Mode is
going to be enabled by default in Emacs 23.

My part solution is to have several default Emacs "personalities" - or
perhaps better called "Emacsicalities" - perhaps 2 or 3 of them.  Each
one would be implemented by a Lisp file setting certain defaults.  So,
the "CUA Emacsicality" would enable cua-mode, and maybe one or two other
things, "Classic Emacsicality" would leave all settings at their
optimum-for-experts.  The startup screen would prompt the user to chose
his desired Emacsicality, but would at the same time encourage her to
switch to "classic" for the ultimate experience.  Obviously, you'd set
some sort of option for this after the first 2 or 3 times.

However, like everything else in Emacs, good ideas only happen when the
person with the idea implements it.  Maybe I should try this once Emacs
23's been released.

>   Paul

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).