From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: florian@fsavigny.de (Florian v. Savigny) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Etymology of `visiting' files, and for that matter, of `finding' them Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 11:24:53 +0200 Message-ID: <87oa517z8a.fsf@bertrandrussell.Speedport_W_723V_1_40_000> References: <87y447oaaw.fsf@rudiments.goosenet.in> <87invbmkfg.fsf@lifelogs.com> <87lh06bizj.fsf@rudiments.goosenet.in> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1470821144 23195 195.159.176.226 (10 Aug 2016 09:25:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 09:25:44 +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 Aug 10 11:25:40 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1bXPlc-0005sy-E8 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 11:25:40 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:40355 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXPla-0000AS-AM for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 05:25:38 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:51689) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXPl1-0000AN-2a for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 05:25:04 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXPkv-0004n6-Vk for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 05:25:01 -0400 Original-Received: from srv4.ns-domain-hosting.de ([178.63.89.203]:37684) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXPkv-0004mx-LN for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 05:24:57 -0400 X-No-Relay: not in my network Original-Received: from bertrandrussell.Speedport_W_723V_1_40_000 (p4FECC326.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [79.236.195.38]) by srv4.ns-domain-hosting.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5FD8715E0017 for ; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 11:24:55 +0200 (CEST) In-reply-to: (message from Barry Margolin on Tue, 09 Aug 2016 11:37:02 -0400) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 178.63.89.203 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:111104 Archived-At: > I think it may also be a bit of a retronym. Emacs has two commands fo= r=20 > opening files: C-x C-f and C-x C-v. They needed mnemonics that=20 > distinguished them, so the first is "Find" and the second is "Visit". > GNU Emacs has abandoned the mnemonic name of C-x C-v. This is really interesting (along with the information on the "first" buffer that originally opened when you started Emacs), and it has created some unintuitiveness: C-x C-f find-file C-x C-v find-alternate-file I remember I changed these key bindings long ago, because I did find them unmemnonic, to: C-x C-f find-file C-x C-v view-file C-x C-a find-alternate-file (I think this one had no default binding.) It is also interesting that Dired uses the following single-key bindings: e dired-find-file (obviously motivated by the term "editing") ;; but also: f dired-find-file (in reverence to function name and tradition) a dired-find-alternate-file v dired-view-file I realise now that "visit" unfortunately collides with "view", but I still think that the nice "visiting" metaphor deserves more recognition. Of course, "finding" a file is now a term which is sort of hardwired into my brain, but in decades of amateur hacking, I have become convinced that not only the readability of code is very important, but that *even more so*, it matters how painless, intuitive and memnonic the user interface is (which is, surprisingly, even true when I have programmed that interface /myself/), and that it is harmful to make things unnecessarily unintuitive there. (Which may, in Emacs' case, arguably contribute to making its use look like an esoteric endeavor that is best left to the initiated, because it requires you to give some words different meanings in your head than they normally have.) The term "finding" a file would normally be used to refer to finding a file, i.e. searching for and (hopefully) finding it, in line with the *nix "find" command. Any function which expects the path of a file as an argument hardly has any finding left to do. As an interesting practical example of this confusion, consider the find-dired and find-lisp libraries, in which "find" means "find". I have only just discovered them, after ~ 20 yrs of using Emacs on a several times daily basis, and even then only because this thread inspired me to do so. I often forget where certain files are, but I never looked for (or, at least, found) Emacs functions that could have helped me to actually find them. I am now seriously wondering whether the special Emacs meaning of "finding" a file kept me from doing so. It does look like it, because normally, I trust that there is an Emacs function for everything, and look for it. But functions starting with "search-" consistently referred to searching buffers (or files) for _strings_, and "find-" was also ... well, already spoken for. In my last post, my question if we could "rectify" this was at least half a joke, but I now think there may be a case for making Emacs terminology a bit more in line with normal language here. (Which is not always, or necessarily, the same as (rigidly) "consistent", of course, because normal language itself is definitely not consistent.) Any thoughts on this? --=20 Florian von Savigny Melanchthonstr. 41 33615 Bielefeld