The Modernization of Emacs

[Robert Uhl]

That's for the everyday novice-to-intermediate user to decide.

Why should the ignorant decide? Do you leave the decision of what great
art is to 3 year olds and their doting parents? Do you leave the
decision of what great food is to the ignorant, unwashed,
McDonald's-devouring masses? Why then do you leave the decision of
what's a useful interface to those with insufficient experience?

Emacs has a slight learning curve (so too did your Windows/Mac OS
interface conventions--you've just forgotten them), but it is easy to
use. A Windows or Mac OS text editor may have an easier learning curve,
but it'll never be as easy to use.

 

[notbob]

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.emacs.]

If you'd spent half an hour using the tutorial (helpfully displayed
right there when you start emacs), you could have saved three and a half
hours of wasted time. And you'd now be using an actual text editor,
which is often helpful.

Your statement is obviously based on your assumption everyone has as
good a memory as you. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. I
came to emacs as a geezer with a less than sterling short term memory.
I got about 8 keystrokes into the tutorial before I was lost. I
finally had to start a cheat sheet. It's also a PIA to read a
tutorial and practice in another window until you know how to
open/close/juggle said windows. I never did get much from emacs'
tutorial. It also took me awhile to train my pinkies to reach for
that until-now-unused Ctrl key. No, using emacs is not trivial. It's
a learned skill that requires some effort. More for some than others.
In emacs', defense, it's a helluva lot more intuitive than vi, which
is a nightmare straight from Hell!

nb

 

[Joel J. Adamson]

You know you can use something like
C-x C-f /su::/etc/fstab RET
(or /sudo::/etc/fstab) in order to edit files as root in a normal
Emacs session?

I did not know that. That will save me huge amounts of time. You're
my hero.

Joel

--
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109

A webpage of interest:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html

 

[Joel J. Adamson]

I just tried it: works for me.

Joel

The package "tramp" will provide that (as well as editing files over
ssh, scp, rsync, telnet, plink...). It is already preinstalled in
Emacs 22.1, but can also be installed for earlier versions.

--
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109

A webpage of interest:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html

 

[Joel J. Adamson]

A new user of two hours' experience. A father of a six-year old whose
child hums along happily with emacs. A computer widow who "had no
frustration whatsoever" with it.

I'll add that the words "Oh, cool" came out of her mouth during one
Emacs session, as they did when I showed it to a coworker.

Joel

--
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109

A webpage of interest:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html

 

[Joel J. Adamson]

Huh? The latter are available by default on Emacs 22.1.

Interesting, maybe I have a telepathetic connection with the
developers; either that or I just kept using the same .emacs when I
upgraded

(I had to change this when I was using Emacs 21.4, since I started
using C-h for backspace)

Joel

--
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109

A webpage of interest:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html

 

[Martin Gregorie]

I'm a Windows user who has installed, and quite regularly use, a fairly wide
variety of \text\ editors, depending upon the type of \text\ I'm editing.

I think that makes my point.

PFE (which is windows only) can be customized to handle the formatting
quirks of every plain text file I've ever needed to edit on a Windows
box. Why would I need a second editor?

microEmacs is even more customizable and scriptable and does just as
good a job for *nix, Windows and OS/9 systems. I use it rather than
EMACS because I used an OS/9 system, which used microEmacs (me, umacs)
for several years before I was introduced to UNIX systems. By then I had
it set up to provide the same look and feel under OS/9, DOS and Windows.
One archive unpack and compilation later it was doing exactly the same
on an SVR4 box. As soon as I installed Linux I did the port 'n compile
again.

I'm not fond of vi (vim, pvic) though its batch regex handling is very
good. What other editor is there that can work in full screen mode on
termcap's 'dumb' or 'glasstty' terminal types? pvic works under
DOS/Windows too. Its useful to know because it WILL some day dig me out
of a hole when something vital breaks.

 

[Martin Gregorie]

[Martin Gregorie <[email protected]>]
|
| As for documentation, lets look at vi. Not a great editor, but every
| *nix variation has it installed and any fool can learn to use it in
| about 2 hours flat and it does at least have good pattern matching.

there's also the "info" system in Emacs, which not only covers Emacs
itself, but usually also a lot of documentation available for Emacs
extensions and other programs. again, this predates a lot of things
that people are used to today, so just because it seems (and sometimes
is) a bit more fiddly, it must necessarily be inferior.

I thought it might be in "info", like most GNUish things but I couldn't
check because I don't have it installed.

for instance, Linux has come a long way in addressing the needs of
desktop users, yet some people refuse to use Linux because it doesn't
behave *exactly* like Windows (as if that was a worthwhile goal) and
they are too lazy or don't think they can manage, to learn a new
system.

Yep, and the same people think a command line is to be avoided at all
costs. "I mean, its so /last century/ and you can't do anything useful
with it anyway".

Obligatory OT comment: right now I have two xterm sessions open with
which I've been writing a Swing/JDBC app using nowt but a bash shell,
cvs, microEmacs and (of course) J2SE. I don't need no steenking IDE.

 

[Falcolas]

You're quite right. Windows/Mac user interfaces are so clunky that they
massively hamper productivity. Emacs, OTOH, enables it. For example,
C-s is search forward; C-r is search backward ('reverse'); C-M-s is
search forward for a regular expression; C-M-r is search backward for a
regular expression. A Windows or Mac editor would have C-s for save,
and that's it. It might have C-f for find, but it'd pop up a dialogue
instead of offering an interactive search, causing a mental context
switch. Searching would interrupt one's flow of thought rather than
being part of it.

Being a primarily windows user, I have to question your assertion that
using ctrl-f for find causes a "mental context switch". For me, in 90%
of the windows applications, finding something is as simple as ctrl-f,
the phrase, hit enter. Not terribly different from your set of
commands. The biggest difference is that if I need to use a Find
feature I might not often use, I have a visual interface to all the
related search functions. On the other hand, a terminal program would
necessitate a memory search at best, or a trip to the help pages at
worst.

The best part of my windows knowledge is that it's transferable to
most (all?) of the applications I work with. Find is usually ctrl-f.
Undo is ctrl-z. Save is ctrl-s, yadda yadda. Such knowledge is rarely
transferable from terminal programs in my experience -- what may be
true for one program (emacs) is wildly different in another program
(vi), and useless in yet another (pico).

On the other hand, I can move from notepad to Word to Open Office to
Notepad++, based on the availability at the terminal I'm on, with
little difficulty.

For the record, I use VIM when in terminals. Emacs isn't available on
our *nix boxes.

 

[Kaldrenon]

Feel free to disagree with what I'm about to say. I know that this
thread would be far, FAR shorter if OP hadn't been instigating
disagreement, but so far most of the discourse has been polite, so I'm
going to say what I'm thinking.

I think there are far too many people in all camps (the Emacs camp,
the vi* camp, and the GUI/IDE/point-and-click-and-make-
everything-"user-friendly" camp) who look at this disagreement as a
debate in which they Are Right, and the members of the other two camps
Are Wrong. There are billions of people in this world, and even if you
ignore the ones who don't need to use a text editor or word processor
on a regular basis, you end up with a VERY large number of people. And
people are different. We think differently, we all have different
things that come to us naturally, different things that are tricky but
learn-able, and different things that we'll never be able to do
without a manual open in front of us.

There are a lot of people for whom emacs is easy to learn, logical to
use, and the way it is set up (or at least the way -they- set it up)
is so natural to them that they'll never be as productive anywhere
else. But there are also a lot of people for whom emacs doesn't click,
who can give it a genuine try but still not catch on, and even once
they learn enough to muddle through, they'll always work better in
Word, or in an IDE.

But I think there's something else to it, and it's part of why I think
the emacs faithful swear by it so fiercely, even if it does seem a
daunting tool to master.

I don't think anyone can make the argument that any (past or current)
graphics-based editor is as efficient when being used to its fullest
as a text-based editor. It's basic math - it takes measurably more
time to move a hand to the mouse, move/click the mouse, and more the
hand back to the touch-typing position than it does to execute even a
moderately complex series of keystrokes. Maybe not large amounts of
time -per action-, but it doesn't take too long for it to add up if
you spend a lot of time editing.

Contrast the time saved by not having to reposition one's hands, the
extensibility, and customization against the learning curve of an
interface that doesn't exactly throw its controls at the user, and
here's the conclusion I think results: graphical interfaces are -
easier- to develop some proficiency with, but proficiency with emacs
pays of far more in the long run.

And if you disagree with me, or if you think I expressed my point
poorly (I'm good that that), all you need to do is ask Steve Yegge his
thoughts on emacs.

-Andrew

 

[Kaldrenon]

I don't think anyone can make the argument that any (past or current)
graphics-based editor is as efficient when being used to its fullest
as a text-based editor.

Clarifying - this part of the claim assumes a fairly similar feature
set, naturally.

 

[Falcolas]

I don't think anyone can make the argument that any (past or current)
graphics-based editor is as efficient when being used to its fullest
as a text-based editor. It's basic math - it takes measurably more
time to move a hand to the mouse, move/click the mouse, and more the
hand back to the touch-typing position than it does to execute even a
moderately complex series of keystrokes. Maybe not large amounts of
time -per action-, but it doesn't take too long for it to add up if
you spend a lot of time editing.

Contrast the time saved by not having to reposition one's hands, the
extensibility, and customization against the learning curve of an
interface that doesn't exactly throw its controls at the user, and
here's the conclusion I think results: graphical interfaces are -
easier- to develop some proficiency with, but proficiency with emacs
pays of far more in the long run.

I have to point out, that this makes the assumption that the most oft-
used commands in a GUI editor are not as easily accessed from the
keyboard as they are in a terminal editor.

I took a moment to look at the gui editor which has been made
available to me, and short of the "remove leading spaces" commands, I
do not need to remove my hands from the keyboard if I do not want to.

Your statement holds true if, and only if, a user does not take full
advantage of the keyboard commands. But if we're talking about
experienced users in both cases, then that's not an issue, is it?

 

[Kaldrenon]

Your statement holds true if, and only if, a user does not take full
advantage of the keyboard commands. But if we're talking about
experienced users in both cases, then that's not an issue, is it?

Granted. I suppose my claim should have been more specifically about
the means of interaction, and not about the tool being used. After
all, Emacs 22.1 has fairly complete point-and-click support, even
though I suspect more people use the keyboard as their primary input.

 

[Matthias Buelow]

I don't think anyone can make the argument that any (past or current)
graphics-based editor is as efficient when being used to its fullest
as a text-based editor.

Actually, I think the argument can be made:

``We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface.
We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:

* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
mousing.
* The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
keyboarding.''

(from http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Mouse_vs._keyboard/index.html )

However, at least for me, heavy mousing is stressful to the wrist, so I
prefer to keep my hands on the keyboard (even though I use a trackball,
which greatly reduces the strain for me).
I also think that while intuitive cursor positioning and text selection
operations may be faster with a mouse, complex operations (like on the
shell or complex editor commands) are impractical through a pure
point+click interface.

 

[Jeff Higgins]

I think that makes my point.

The point you seem to be trying to make you stated further up thread.

I said MOST, not all!

And you have not given me a list of ALL or MOST Windows text editors so
that I can make my comparisons.

 

[notbob]

Feel free to disagree with what I'm about to say. [...]
And if you disagree with me, or if you think I expressed my point
poorly....

I think you expressed it well. I'll add that using one does not
necessarilly exclude using the other. I tend to use whatever makes
the job easiest FOR ME! ...be it a gui or the command line. Also,
ease of learning emacs has absolutely zero to do with mental prowess
and not everyone using it is a code whiz. Except for some html and
shell scripting, I do almost zero developement because it bores me to
freakin' tears. That's not to say I can't like the command line and
emacs.

All types of user interface have their pros and cons and it's
senseless to limit one's self to one or the other. Some tasks benefit
from using both simultaneously, acad and gimp/p-shop being prime
examples. Sure, everyone loves the camaraderie of belonging to a
group. That's just being human. But, choosing a preference doesn't
require fanatical loyalty to the exclusion of all other options, or at
least it shouldn't. Use the one that's best for the job.

nb

 

[Dave Hansen]

I don't see that. C-h t is your friend if you're starting out. The
only keystrokes a user really needs to remember are C-x C-s and C-x C-c;
everything else simple text editing needs works as expected (arrow keys,
backspace and so forth). Granted, text-mode is friendlier than

I'm not so sure C-h t is anybody's friend anymore. Every version of
Emacs that I've used since 1984 has supported the arrow and page up/
down keys. And every version of the tutorial that I've read (the
latest just a couple years back) insists on starting the user out with
C-f, C-b, C-p, C-n, C-V, and ESC-V, with some lame explanation like
"touch-typists shun the arrow and page keys, and besides, they might
not be supported on the next terminal you use." Like ESC, I suppose.
Furrfu.

Regards,

-=Dave

 

[Galen Boyer]

but it is easy to use. A Windows or Mac OS text editor may have an
easier learning curve, but it'll never be as easy to use.

This really is the biggest argument. Emacs takes more time to learn
than any other environment I've used. But, Emacs is the easiest to use
interface I've ever come across, by a very very wide margin.

 

[Michal Nazarewicz]

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...

I don't know about *your* version of Emacs but in *my* version one can
switch windows using mouse. I think that's pretty easy especially for
beginners who are used to Windows.

There was also a Help menu on menu bar but I disabled menu bar since
keybindings are more convenient for me.

 

[Bjorn Borud]

[Twisted <[email protected]>]
|
| 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*.

bah, UNIX is not user hostile; it is just selective about its
friends.

-Bjørn