Re: Some developement questions

[Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>]

On 08/09/18 02:15, hw wrote:
> Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz> writes:
>> Whatever you feel you're gaining from hiding the menus surely
>> can't be of greater benefit to you than all the knowledge and
>> functionality that you're missing as a consequence?
>
> Well, I'm not missing anything.  What would I be searching for in
> the menues, and why would I bother to look?

In the snippets I quoted before, as well as in other earlier emails,
you have explained how there are numerous Emacs features and modes
that you don't really know how to use because you don't know what the
key bindings are; and also that you have hidden the feature which
would most trivially let you find out what they did and how to use
them.  With the menus visible I am *imagining* that it would occur to
you to look at them the next time you were wondering what sorts of
commands a particular mode provided, and that in the process you may
even discover some useful key bindings as well.


> Do you have an example?

Sure.  You said just before:

> Emacs can work with CVS systems like git.  I haven't found yet out
> how to make use of this feature, yet I'm sure there are lots of key
> bindings that make editing source code much more efficient when you
> are using CVS systems.

Sitting there waiting in the Tools -> Version Control menu we find
all of the following:

VC Dir                         C-x v d
Ignore File...                 C-x v G
Register                       C-x v i
Check In/Out                   C-x v v
Update to Latest Version       C-x v +
Push Changes                   C-x v P
Revert to Base Version         C-x v u
Insert Header
Show Top of the Tree History   C-x v L
Show History                   C-x v l
Show Incoming Log              C-x v I
Show Outgoing Log              C-x v O
Update ChangeLog               C-x v a
Compare Tree with Base Version C-x v D
Compare with Base Version      C-x v =
Show Other Version             C-x v ~
Rename File
Annotate                       C-x v g
Create Tag                     C-x v s
Retrieve Tag                   C-x v r

Which tells you a whole bunch of useful commands for working with
a VCS system, and means you never need to worry about forgetting
any of the bindings (but it still tells you what they are, so that
you could use them instead if you chose to).

And of course checking the manual (maybe via the Help menu) would
quickly take you to the Info node "(emacs)Version Control" where
you could learn all about this feature in detail.


I have to admit that I'm genuinely perplexed.  On the one hand you
profess to having some difficulty finding out how to do things -- or
even what things there might be available to do -- all of which sounds
to me a lot like "I'm missing things"; and on the other hand you say
"I'm not missing anything" and that you see no reasons to look in the
menus, despite those menus existing for the purposes of showing people
the things they can do, and making it easy to do them even when they
don't know the key bindings.

If the menus are not one of the *best* answers to your issue, then
I've completely and utterly misunderstood.

In any case, I shall stop harping on about it.


-Phil