B
BartlebyScrivener
[this post is a excerpt from
The Modernization of Emacs
At the command line, change "emacs" to "gvim"
http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca/opinions/editors.html
rd
[this post is a excerpt from
The Modernization of Emacs
Twisted said:On the other hand, being actively beginner-hostile leads to nobody
adopting the tool. Then again, if you don't mind being the last
generation that'll ever use it, then I guess you're okay with
that. If it suits its existing users, the rest of us will just
continue to use something else.
I continue to suspect that there's an ulterior motive for making and
keeping certain software actively beginner-hostile; a certain macho
elitism also seen with light aircraft pilots and commented on at
www.asktog.com (exact URL escapes me; sorry).
Ed said:Thanks, all, for the answers.
But, Lew: GWMF?
- Gardner Winter Music Festival? (You have to love the black'n'white
photo on the right at: http://www.gwmf.org/)
- Generalized Whitening-Matched Filter?
- http://www.gwmf.com/ ?
- http://www.gwmf.de/host/ ?
- http://www.goatworld.com/gwmf.shtml ????
You are babbling.
Emacs is amazingly beginner-friendly for the power and flexibility it
provides. [snip]
[this post is a excerpt from
The Modernization of Emacs
At the command line, change "emacs" to "gvim"
You are babbling.
No, I am not. You, however, are being gratuitously insulting.
Emacs is amazingly beginner-friendly for the power and flexibility it
provides. [snip]
That's a joke, right? I tried it a time or two. Every time it was
rapidly apparent that doing anything non-trivial would require
consulting a cheat sheet. The printed-out kind, since navigating to
the help and back without already having the help displayed and open
to the command reference was also non-trivial.
Four hours of wasted time later, with zero productivity to show for
it, I deleted it. The same thing happened again, so it wasn't a bad
day or a fluke or a one-off or the particular version, either.
No, I am not. You, however, are being gratuitously insulting.
Twisted said:I have that exact URL now --
http://www.asktog.com/columns/027InterfacesThatKill.html
Twisted said:That's a joke, right? I tried it a time or two. Every time it was
rapidly apparent that doing anything non-trivial would require
consulting a cheat sheet. The printed-out kind, since navigating to
the help and back without already having the help displayed and open
to the command reference was also non-trivial.
I still have a good deal to learn, even of the basics, but I've toyed
with it casually for a little bit (a total of two hours at most, but
almost certainly less) and I already know enough that finding out how
to do anything else IS trivial. It's not a program whose controls
throw themselves at you, exactly, but with a touch of patience and a
genuine interest in learning, it's not too bad.
Utterly unrelated to Emacs.
[this post is a excerpt from
The Modernization of EmacsAt the command line, change "emacs" to "gvim"
Out of the frying pan and into the fire...
Twisted said:I think it is quite relevant. Clunky computer interfaces may not be
so dramatically dangerous, but they certainly can hamper
productivity.
Between Windows bugs and gratuitous misfeatures (e.g. DRM) and Unix
clunkiness, billions of dollars of potential productivity is lost
worldwide every *month*.
Ah, yes.. we live in a time where no-one seems to have the patience to
read documentation anymore. Maybe that's why there is such a scarcity of
good documentation with many "modern" software packages.
``I abhor a system designed for the "user", if that word is a coded
pejorative meaning "stupid and unsophisticated".''
Twisted said:I don't know what software you're describing, but it's obviously not
emacs, unless there have been some HUGE changes to (at minimum) the
help and pane-navigation (er, excuse me, "window"-navigation)
controls...
But Emacs does not have a "clunky" interface.
Twisted said:Emacs does have documentation. The problem is you have to already
know a load of emacs navigation oddities^Wkeyboard commands to get
to and use it.
Also, basic tasks should not require consulting the documentation,
unless the application genre is new to the user.
Twisted said:That's for the everyday novice-to-intermediate user to decide.
Your gnu.org email address (and attitude) clearly marks you as not a
normal user, and so your opinion doesn't count.
Twisted said:Emacs does have documentation. The problem is you have to already know
a load of emacs navigation oddities^Wkeyboard commands to get to and
use it.
Yeah, and I abhor the elitist systems that are designed with the
philosophy that anyone who hasn't mastered years of arcane
memorization and training in just that one idiosyncratic system is /
ipso facto/ "stupid and unsophisticated". Most of us 6 and a half
billion people have better uses for our time, such as buckling in and
being promptly productive, once we're out of high school or college,
and fully three and a quarter of us are at least as smart as average,
and so /ipso facto/ *not* "stupid and unsophisticated".
Twisted said:Emacs is amazingly beginner-friendly for the power and flexibility it
provides. [snip]
That's a joke, right? I tried it a time or two. Every time it was
rapidly apparent that doing anything non-trivial would require
consulting a cheat sheet.
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