Re: Baby Emacs?

[pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)]

Michael Ekstrand <michael@elehack.net> writes:

> kj wrote:
>> I am teaching programming to a few co-workers (research biologists).
>> Most of them want some recommendation for a text editor.  Of course,
>> I recommend to them Emacs, but I would prefer to recommend a simpler
>> version of Emacs, one with fewer features, and also fewer ways to
>> get confused.  Is there such a thing?
>
> If you really do want a simpler Emacs, I would second the recommendation
> of zile.
>
> I question, however, the advisedness of this.  IMO, the major advantage
> to using Emacs is its feature set, not its key bindings or a particular
> editing model.  If you don't want the feature set, there are other
> editors which are easier to learn than Emacs (such as nano, gedit, or
> JEdit).
>
> I'd go with a normal Emacs with a sane and simple initial configuration.
>  Sure, it has lots of ways to get confused, but it has the real
> advantages of Emacs available.

In any case, emacs itself is a simplier emacs.
You only have to learn a few keybindings to be able to use it.

If you have a modern keyboard (ie. with arrow keys) you can skip
cursor movement chords.  So the only remaining key chords you need to
learn to use emacs -Q like you'd use nano are:

C-x C-f     find-file
C-x C-s     save-file
C-x C-k     kill-buffer
C-x C-c     save-buffers-kill-emacs
C-x o       other-window             (sometimes emacs opens 'windows')
C-x 1       delete-other-windows
C-g         cancel                   (cancel the current command)
C-q         escape                   (insert the following literal key chord into the buffer)
C-r         search backward
C-s         search forward
C-w         kill-region              (cut)
M-w         kill-ring-save           (copy)
C-y         yank                     (paste)
C-SPC       set-mark-command

F1 F1       help

All the editing you can do with the arrows, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, DEL
(or the mouse).


And when you feel ready to use more emacs features, you can read the
tutorial: F1 t  (as explained by the help F1 F1).


Now if you want, we could make a mode that would bind these commands
to other keys (ie. cut C-x, copy C-c, paste C-v, find-file C-o,
save-file C-s, etc ; but you wouldn't learn the standard emacs key
bindings), and that would disable all the other keybindings (but
self-insert-command of course), so that the user who types random key
chords may not entrap himself.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__