On Sep 22, 12:01 am, Joost Kremers <joostkrem...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Christian Herenz wrote:

> > I was in the lab, and saw that a guy on the other
> > site worked inside an xemacs session. I asked him, why he puts
everything in the
> > *scratch* buffer - and he looked at me and asked "buffer - scratch -
sure you
> > are allright". I think that lots of emacs users today just use emacs as
it where
> > notepad.exe or something like that, especially in scientifc environments
some
> > people could boost their productivity, if they would at least know some
of the
> > basics of the editor in the beginning of their career. When I told the
guy: "Do
> > you know, that you can open more than one file at a time in emacs?" He
asked me:
> > "Why the hell should I want to do that - I just open another emacs...".
>
> man... such people should simply be banned from using emacs ever again.
;-)

This is an unhelpful attitude -- not just for that guy but ultimately for
emacs also. Ive seen too many beautiful things die because they could not
reach a large enough user base -- eg scheme is dying, APL is dead etc.

If a large number of emacs-users can only understand using emacs like
notepad and they end up seeing it as a fat ugly obsolete one which they are
stuck with, Xah is right in asking for us to ease their experience (never
mind his language :-) )

So some suggestions ...

1. In addition/combination to the first startup screen having the tutorial
and other blah (which anyway we oldhands turn off) we should have a series
of levels of usage (something like viper mode gives).  Things like the
scratch buffer should not be there for the 'dummies-ier' levels

2. Buffers for fundamental mode and lisp-interaction mode should have
buffer-offer-save turned on (by default of course -- old hands who like the
old behavior can always turn it off)