From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: rusi Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Using proportional (variable-width) fonts in Emacs23 Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:47:43 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <516de695-18e0-4442-9616-63bc24b99a58@18g2000prd.googlegroups.com> References: <898836.13190.qm@web121803.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <4d9120aa$0$23756$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <47119ce7-b1d1-4967-aa3e-d10112f10510@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <4d9232cb$0$23752$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1301456437 8473 80.91.229.12 (30 Mar 2011 03:40:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 03:40:37 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Mar 30 05:40:30 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@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 1Q4mGk-0001Zy-La for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:40:30 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54514 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Q4mGj-0007v2-Pb for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:40:29 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!18g2000prd.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 34 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 116.73.35.230 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1301453264 14366 127.0.0.1 (30 Mar 2011 02:47:44 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:47:44 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 18g2000prd.googlegroups.com; posting-host=116.73.35.230; posting-account=mBpa7woAAAAGLEWUUKpmbxm-Quu5D8ui User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13,gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:186398 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:80522 Archived-At: On Mar 30, 12:28=A0am, Uday Reddy wrote: > rusi wrote: > >> Well, my subjective feeling is that I read better if the text is in > >> proportional font, and I can write better if it is in monospace. =A0 > > > This is an interesting observation. (Especially the second part) > > Do you have a clue why? > > It must again be the habit of typing in monospace for years. =A0Your eyes > are looking for text in a particular place but the proportional font > condenses it. By reducing these questions to habits, the implication is that say for younger folk who only know 'modern' technology (like Word) things like emacs will be suboptimal and in fact make no sense. My own sense is that - Some habits are suboptimal and worth (trying to) change - Some are suboptimal but its just too uphill to change (eg qwerty vs dvorak) - And some things are just naturally wrong -- eg using a dumbed down mouse interface rather than the keyboard. Evidently people may disagree on what is natural: eg Microsoft and Apple have different view on what font is readable on a screen. Coming back to the typing question: For the first hundred years after the invention of the typewriter two things were inseparably linked: 1 Using a keyboard to type 2 The above resulting in 'typewriter' (monospace) text Surely separating these should make certain optimizations available that were not available earlier??