From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: About Emacs Modernisation Project Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:39:41 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: References: <143c6d28-4423-4e43-9fc5-c0fb3340043b@c11g2000vbe.googlegroups.com> <87ljazofkn.fsf@rapttech.com.au> <04eff456-349f-4840-b0f7-d1784f6b7058@d12g2000vbr.googlegroups.com> <87r5krh3e0.fsf@unm.edu> <66c5242b-d254-4646-9537-6c669c6616bb@d12g2000vbr.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291836230 2493 80.91.229.12 (8 Dec 2010 19:23:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 19:23:50 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Dec 08 20:23:45 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PQPc5-0007sn-Dt for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 20:23:41 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:37062 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQPc4-0006OZ-Nx for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:23:40 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 40 Original-X-Trace: individual.net Fc+WXXfwBZqg+jbU1BuVMglE7Pf61Iq0Ygw87GauS3Kfyult2W Cancel-Lock: sha1:MDIxYTNmZDU1ZDE3YmY4YTljYjFiZDdjODdkOTdlYjIxODRjNDMwYg== sha1:aC22X/M21ydUf2LRms2qOwaBg9U= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en X-Disabled: X-No-Archive: no User-Agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) Emacs/23.1 (darwin) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:178558 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:75880 Archived-At: Maarten Bergvelt writes: > On 2010-06-01, LanX wrote: >> But the lack of namespaces leads to very long names which IMHO >> irritate newbies. >> [...] >> Snippets manipulating different aspects of font-lock would look less >> intimidating, without the need to repeat "font-lock-" 20 times. > > Have you discovered the tab-key? I am an incompetent 2 finger typer, > but with emacs I am pretty fast, as I can use all kinds of automatic > completions. > > Having long identifiers makes them easier to understand, and only > slightly harder to input. I've got the impression (this of course would need experimental input), that psychologically it's better indeed to have short names. It's not a question of typing them, with or without completion; we read much more than we write, usually. If long names weren't a psychological problem there wouldn't be so many acronyms, and even most of the words in our "natural" languages are nothing but acronyms or abreviations, if you're to believe Edo Nyland's theory. http://www.linguistic-archaeology.eu/ http://www.amazon.com/Linguistic-Archaeology-Introduction-Edo-Nyland/dp/1552126684 Summary: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/nytheory.htm Of course, short names lead to overloading, hence the need for context. Happily, our brains work marvellously on contextual data. This is what Common Lisp packages are and define: a context for the names used in programs. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com