Re: Generating a listing of all symbols (16K+) and labeling subsets

[Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com>]

hansbkk@gmail.com writes:

> Total noob here - and non-programmer to boot, as will become
> immediately apparent from the code below - so please be gentle.
>
> Before I start getting to know emacs as an end-users - which I'm
> highly motivated to do, despite the amazingly steep learning curve to
> do the most basic things - I plan to of course highly customize my
> emacs environment to suit my needs, before starting the muscle-memory
> training required to become efficient.

There's no one right way to learn Emacs.  But, I think the way you're
choosing is a lot of work.

You can start off using it for everyday editing, that's what I did and
what lots of people do.  I expect you've done the tutorial and learned
the keybindings, that's very useful.  Then read a bit of the manual
and the internet resources occasionally and learn more.

You only really need to looks for customizations, enable non-default
packages, etc. when you run into a problem or you feel something is
inefficient.  Why change the standard behaviour if it's not a problem?

Don't worry too much about the customizing before learning the keychords.
The keys don't really change that much.  A lot of non-standard packages
don't change the keychords at all, they just add new commands.  Of the
rest lots of them use the default keychords to do slightly different
things.  There are a few packages that add new keychords that you'll
want to use instead of default ones, but not many.  There are very few
packages that override default keybindings with totally different
things.  Mostly you can ignore that case.

You might want to add a shorter-keybinding for C-x o (other-window) and
get used to that.  But that's about it.

There are lots of keychords that are undefined by default, those are
your playground to do what you want.  As far as I know every keybinding
of the form C-c <alphabetic character> is free in all modes packaged
with Emacs.

BR,
Robert Thorpe