Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[excalamus--- via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

May 28, 2020, 13:34 by kfogel@red-bean.com:

> On 28 May 2020, T.V Raman wrote:
> >emacs kbd commands -- and other well-designed ergonomic systems, eg
> >vi's h,j,k,l for navigation are better thought of as muscle
> >memory. The mnemonics are useful to learn, yes, but given the weird
> >layout of the qwerty keyboard,  rigidly sticking to mnemonics often
> >leads to non-ergonomic keybindings.
>
> Amen to what T.V. says here.
>
> Often, when people say that keybindings should be "intuitive", they mean something like "there should be some connection between a plausible English-language description of what the keybinding does and the letters involved in the keybinding itself".
>
> But such language/key associations are only useful to newcomers anyway.  After all, there is nothing about the word "quit" that inherently suggests its meaning -- it's just that those who have learned English have learned what that word means.  Similarly, those who have learned the language of Emacs know that C-g means the same thing (well, something very similar).
>
> Even independently of keyboard layout (mine is not QWERTY) this kind of intuitiveness is of questionable value.  It *does* help newcomers somewhat, but if used as an overriding principle it can result in an overly sparse keybinding space or in problematic physical combinations like single-finger hurdles.
>
> >So it's always a choice --- does one wish to create a system that is
> >"easy to learn" but painful to use, or one that "a little harder to
> >learn" with the benefit of being extremely efficient in the
> >long-run. I still think VI's nav keys are one of the best choices I've
> >seen from an ergonomics point of view, but completely "unintuitive"
> >for whatever "intuitive" means.
>
> Agreed.  Vi's default navigation keybindings are, frankly, better than Emacs' (or at least they are on a QWERTY keyboard).  It also takes people a long time to learn them.
>
> (I'm not suggesting Emacs change its default here: too many people have learned the existing way, the efficiency gain is not so huge anyway, and other bits of Emacs have been built around the assumptions of those default navigational keybindings so there's no telling what full effects of such a switch would be at this point.)
>
> Best regards,
> -Karl
>
Fair enough.  My thoughts were centered on how to explain to newcomers the use/benefits of 'C-g', especially within the manual.  I was curious what perspectives others have.

My understanding of the discussion prior to my interjection was that newcomers appear to misunderstand, are reluctant to use, or forget about 'C-g'.  I hope I didn't derail the convo into one of changing the physical location or the keybinding!  There's too much history to change 'C-g'.  For better or worse, it's what we have.