From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Marko Vojinovic Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Poll about proposed change in DEL (aka Backspace) and Delete Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 12:39:31 +0100 Message-ID: <201110041239.32014.vvmarko@gmail.com> References: <87litcvtu2.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <4E8A8B64.9090705@arlsoft.com> Reply-To: vmarko@ipb.ac.rs NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1317728397 19606 80.91.229.12 (4 Oct 2011 11:39:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 11:39:57 +0000 (UTC) Cc: info-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, emacs-delete-poll@gnu.org To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 04 13:39:52 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RB3Li-0001XK-Vc for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:39:51 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41733 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RB3Li-0000AF-AD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:39:50 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:39318) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RB3LX-0008OH-D7 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:39:40 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RB3LW-0004C8-26 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:39:39 -0400 Original-Received: from mail-ey0-f169.google.com ([209.85.215.169]:47234) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RB3LV-0004C3-Sk; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:39:37 -0400 Original-Received: by eye13 with SMTP id 13so436334eye.0 for ; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:39:36 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=from:reply-to:to:subject:date:user-agent:cc:references:in-reply-to :mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:message-id; bh=58dfhbiqAUm9qlN4dkbArn3ZWCi/aDvfWlpqyzrHvp8=; b=Bq/wmulFkpNyUnMYwoA+rfoB+E89sJYUoM9oaoIP97QuksamBTYClKVZxdMHPGKdGR QUmR/gWcyyJHVN5prrdRi5BScUSn5HHMUnwKyChrKUOM6iQJBaKXSWjdNenJui8DxP6B OB9saTJvUfShtI2hK9zKSatdusvdfVyGlCzhw= Original-Received: by 10.216.137.223 with SMTP id y73mr1361412wei.6.1317728376509; Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:39:36 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from yoda.localnet (bl4-145-65.dsl.telepac.pt. [81.193.145.65]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id gg18sm2911496wbb.26.2011.10.04.04.39.34 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:39:34 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: KMail/1.13.7 (Linux/2.6.35.14-96.fc14.x86_64; KDE/4.6.5; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: <4E8A8B64.9090705@arlsoft.com> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 2) X-Received-From: 209.85.215.169 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:82439 Archived-At: On Tuesday 04 October 2011 05:28:20 MBR wrote: > As things currently stand, there are three different kinds of delete > functionality I use: delete 1 character backward, delete 1 character > forward, and delete the marked region. For over 25 years I've been used > to those functions being invoked by BACKSPACE, C-d, and C-w > respectively. Yes, I could retrain myself, just as I had to do years > ago when IBM put the CTRL key in the wrong place. But it will > inevitably be a big pain. How often do you mark a region and then decide to delete a few characters here and there while it is marked? When you mark a region, is it not reasonable to expect that the next action will be applied to that region? > If it weren't core functionality you were proposing changing the > assignments of, I probably wouldn't care. But delete functionality is > some of the most basic functionality of any editor, just as stop > functionality is some of the most basic functionality of a car. What do > you think would happen if some car manufacturer decided to violate the > established standard that the brake pedal is to the left of the gas > pedal? If that were to happen, I'm pretty sure there would suddenly be > a whole lot more car crashes because people would be confused about > which pedal does what. Changing keystroke assignments isn't going to > cause life-threatening crashes, but it will inevitably cause millions of > pico-crashes -- not anything that's going to cause serious harm, but > enough to cause real annoyance. If you like analogies, I'd say that there is a certain standard among everyone about the position of the brake pedal, except in Emacs cars which have a different (ancient-style) position. I think it is quite reasonable, in the interest of minimizing confusion and car crashes, that Emacs cars adjust the pedal positions to what every driver expects (with the possible exception of old-style Emacs drivers who can keep the old pedals if they wish). ;-) > I remember back during the Apple look-and-feel wars you were > distributing a flyer arguing that if look-and-feel had been the law of > the land when the typewriter keyboard was first designed, every > typewriter company would have had to invent its own incompatible layout, > and instead of typists we'd have Remington keyboard typists, > Smith-Corona typists, Olivetti typists, etc. Keystroke letter > assignments on a typewriter and keystroke function assignments for > critical functionality in an editor should change seldom or never. Well, today you have Emacs typists, and everyone else. Why shouldn't Emacs change, for the greater benefit of having a uniform keystroke assignments (at least those most basic and fundamental ones) across all text editors? > It sounds like the goal here is to make Emacs behave like MS Word. > Why? If I wanted to use Word, I'd run Word or Libre Office. No, the goal here is to make Emacs behave like every other editor does (bar a couple of them maybe). I really don't see a point in comparing Emacs to Word, nor I understand why people consider this kind of change as "behave like Word". If some feature or behavior is good and useful in an editor, it is quite likely that most editors and word processors will have it (yes, including even Word). So why deny yourself a useful feature only because Word also has it? Furthermore, most of the text editors and word processors out there have the same feature, why do folks tend to single out MS Word to compare against? Best, :-) Marko