From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs terminology (not again!?) [was: Apologia for bzr] Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:02:20 +0100 Organization: Organization?!? Message-ID: <87zjmtwqtv.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <877gact76s.fsf@gnu.org> <34c8c13b-c5c6-4e5a-9248-b09d5d1936da@default> <87eh4hkq6c.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <83y52dk82n.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1390039362 28487 80.91.229.3 (18 Jan 2014 10:02:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 10:02:42 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jan 18 11:02:50 2014 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 1W4Sjp-0007x1-Od for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:02:49 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41771 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4Sjp-00048h-CN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:02:49 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:53595) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4Sji-00048J-9Y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:02:47 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4Sjd-0002rK-92 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:02:42 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:59164) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4Sjd-0002pU-2w for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:02:37 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1W4Sjb-0007mk-Dv for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:02:35 +0100 Original-Received: from x2f4597d.dyn.telefonica.de ([2.244.89.125]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:02:35 +0100 Original-Received: from dak by x2f4597d.dyn.telefonica.de with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:02:35 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 71 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: x2f4597d.dyn.telefonica.de X-Face: 2FEFf>]>q>2iw=B6, xrUubRI>pR&Ml9=ao@P@i)L:\urd*t9M~y1^:+Y]'C0~{mAl`oQuAl \!3KEIp?*w`|bL5qr,H)LFO6Q=qx~iH4DN; i"; /yuIsqbLLCh/!U#X[S~(5eZ41to5f%E@'ELIi$t^ Vc\LWP@J5p^rst0+('>Er0=^1{]M9!p?&:\z]|;&=NP3AhB!B_bi^]Pfkw User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:HyDbvMblBpPx3HJw7XkNQECty+o= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 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:168662 Archived-At: Lennart Borgman writes: > On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > >> > Emacs is never going to be as easy to learn as simple >> > editors, because ease of learning is not its priority. > > There could be a setup of Emacs that is as easy as any editor to > learn. That's a red herring. What people are looking for are not editors that are easy to learn, but editors that can be used without learning anything at all. I encounter this situation as an accordion player: the joke in , namely somebody asking for a smaller-size accordion, is not without a serious background: people imagine that capsizing a piano will make for a good user interface. It doesn't. Back problems are frequent with accordion players, and particularly women are often slumped in their chairs in order to accommodate the vertical dimension of their keyboard. I play a chromatic button accordion which has buttons rather than piano keys, and I have 62 notes accessible where a piano accordion has at most 45, and even a small piano accordion with 37 keys has a larger height than my instrument and its key mechanics take from the immediate airflow/valve/button interaction facilitating good leggiero play and bellows control. If you take a look at nations where accordions are "mainstream" music instruments, like Finland, France, Russia, you'll find a prevalence of button instruments. Internationally, it's about evenly split for accordion soloists, and about 90% piano accordion for accordion orchestra players (accordion orchestras are collection of accordionists no other instrumentalists want to play with). The ratio would be even higher except for orchestras from those accordion nations where piano accordions are considered outlandish altogether. If viewed in the grand overall scheme of things, it begs the question if we are doing Emacs a favor by giving it the piano keyboard more people think they know how to work with. Yes, it makes it easier to employ Emacs as a throwaway editor you occasionally use and forget again. > I guess that we are really discussing is if there is an advantage of > such a setup. In the light of that there was a whole new editor > (gedit) created I think there could have been a better route. Emacs > could probably have provided everything that gedit gives. > > I also guess it would have been less work. And there would have been a > larger community using and working on Emacs. In countries where the piano accordion is prevalent, accordions are more often associated with music styles, groups, and shows that "serious" musicians consider a laughing stock. That definitely impacts the influx of new players. And in particular, new virtuosi. The future of Emacs depends on people with an attention span and perseverence sufficient for extending it. Those are the people who are most likely to be annoyed at the inconsistency of concepts and operations of things like the full CUA mode (the one which uses heuristics to decide whether to use C-x and C-c in the Emacs or the CUA sense). We should not try to be too clever about looking simple: we will only fool those people who don't actually count towards the well-being of Emacs. So any changes should be done while keeping the coherence of the result closely in check. -- David Kastrup