From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Yet another discussion on improving the first time user experience Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:10:46 +0900 Message-ID: <87eh8g2kdl.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <523ED74D.4030205@online.de> <87ioxs4zc9.fsf@informatimago.com> <87k3i8vj93.fsf@yandex.ru> <83bo3kk6hh.fsf@gnu.org> <87eh8gzee5.fsf@yandex.ru> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1379913084 10431 80.91.229.3 (23 Sep 2013 05:11:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 05:11:24 +0000 (UTC) Cc: pjb@informatimago.com, Eli Zaretskii , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Dmitry Gutov Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Sep 23 07:11:26 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VNyQf-0002pW-0j for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 07:11:25 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:37650 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VNyQe-0001dS-Cg for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:11:24 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:37703) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VNyQU-0001cH-Qo for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:11:22 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VNyQN-0003zQ-Gq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:11:14 -0400 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:34382) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VNyQF-0003xW-Ct; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:10:59 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id B709D970A03; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:10:46 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 237FC1A2846; Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:10:46 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <87eh8gzee5.fsf@yandex.ru> X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta32) "habanero" b0d40183ac79 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:163562 Archived-At: Dmitry Gutov writes: > In all likelihood, a more experienced person who has many keychords > ingrained in their workflow would find it harder to adapt to new ones > than, say, a first-year CS student who's just picking up their first > serious editor. This is certainly true[1], but most "experienced persons" are forced to use CUA bindings elsewhere. It's not the basic "if you've got a shift key and enough time you can mark anything" keystrokes that are the problem. It's that if you restrict yourself to what cua-mode provides (last I looked) Emacs is hardly more powerful than Notepad *as an interactive editor*. Would it really be worth using Emacs if you were limited to that?! What makes Emacs special are things like defun movement and marking, and they're not very discoverable *from CUA*. Users who adhere to RMS's (?) original keystrokes have a "theory" of the keymap. Mostly initial-mnemonic letters[2] combine with modifiers. The modifiers typically have systematic connections to syntactic objects in the buffer: characters, words, symbols, sexps; lines, sentences, defuns, paragraphs.[3] People who start from CUA are going to have to "start over" with a new theory of the keymap to learn to use those powerful commands. While I don't understand the disgust that some people express for the standard Emacs keymap, I do think there's something to the "hard to learn" complaints. To provide an easier path to journeyman level of Emacs usage (by which I mean using movement by syntactic objects other than characters, words, and visual lines[4]), there needs to be a "theory of the keymap" for CUA as powerful as the theory provided by the traditional Emacs bindings which extends CUA to cover the editing features provided by Emacs. Footnotes: [1] Modulo the "serious" part. Microsoft Word *is* a serious editor, I just strongly disagree with it about what should be taken seriously in the editing task in general, not just for programs. And sad but true, yes, I've seen students in a department called "Systems and Information Engineering" use Word to write programs. [2] Eg, "f" for forward motion. [3] Of course this isn't 100% consistent -- with C-w and M-w the modifier changes the operation, not the object -- but it was enough for me. [4] This is a nasty pitfall. By now most computer users are used to the paradigm of automatically wrapping text to fit the screen, and having paragraphs demarcated by newline characters. Then "lines" are "what you see on screen", rather than the regions between newline characters in the buffer.