Re: Change terminology to better align users’ experience with modern GUIs

[<tomas@tuxteam.de>]

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On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 03:46:31PM +0900, 조성빈 wrote:
> Is there any intent or interest in updating the terminology
> of Emacs documentation/function names to better align users’
> experience with modern GUIs? 

Patience, young padovan :-)

Emacs has a working and dedicated community. If you just enter
through the door and say "Hello, everybody: how about we change
all names of things, like, now?"... how do you think people
will react?

Nevertheless you do have a strong point: the Emacs jargon, evolved
over a long time (few software packages in productive usage can look
back on thirty years of history) definitely poses a barrier to entry
for newcomers. Nobody wants that, thus constructive proposals to
change that are, I'm sure, welcome.

Change in Emacs is gradual (but still can be radical [1]), this
is a thing many of its users appreciate highly (I do, for one:
Emacs is one of my main tools, and I can afford to live on the
bleeding edge and compile for me the "newest Emacs" every week
or so. I wouldn't dare to do that with most other software out
there)!

So a good strategy, if you're really hot & willing to change
things would be to grab the documentation, and perhaps write
a companion to the documentation "Glossary" (let's call it
"Anti-Glossary" which translates "current" terms into the
Emacs terminology. So someone searching for "window", "pane",
"cursor", etc. has a chance to hit on the relevant documentation.

A next step might be to cross-index those "current" terms
with the "traditional" ones.

Whether you manage to convince enough people to really change
the language is anyone's guess, but you can start some steps
into that general direction.

P.S: Sorry if this mail comes across as somewhat... condescending.
This is not my intention at all! If that's the case, it is more
due to my inability to put things shortly and clearly.

Sorry for that.

Cheers

[1] I'd highly recommend reading
    https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~monnier/hopl-4-emacs-lisp.pdf
    It's only about the Lisp part of Emacs but gives an impression
    on how much has happened over time.

-- tomás

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