Re: describe-bindings: ^L, bad order, naming

[Miles Bader <snogglethorpe@gmail.com>]

2005/11/12, David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>:
> Sorry to say, but yes, it is obscure.

Perhaps for mac users it is obscure, but it is well supported in Emacs
-- many commands apply to pages separated by ^L

> Something like this is - nowadays - displayed in a graphical way.

This is not macwrite.  Sorry.

Emacs can accomodate beginners to a degree, but I often get the
impression you want to _replace_ well-worn Emacs conventions with
whatever dancing elephants you're used to from the mac, and that isn't
something that's always desirable.  We want to _help_ new users, but
that doesn't always mean simply copying other interfaces; often it
means simply offering a bridge to make it easier for new users to
understand Emacs conventions.

Displaying ^L characters as a horizontal line might be visually nicer
(for everybody, not just beginners), but in normal text (source
buffers etc), hiding the fact that it's simply a character which can
be inserted or deleted etc. like any other, may actually be harmful to
beginners.

If an Emacs convention is scary and distressing to new users, maybe
that's something to consider, but I don't think ^L is in that
category, it's simply something that they may not be used to -- the
presence of ^L characters isn't going to notably inconvenience anyone,
even if they may not be cognizant of all the ways they could take
advantage of them.

[A compromise might be to display a ^L at the beginning of the line,
but a magic-horizontal-rule following it.  This would be even nicer if
emacs had real support for things like horizontal rules of course...
I've often wanted to add new "line drawing" glyph types...]

-miles
--
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.