Re: Menu suggestion

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     I know the keyboard purist elite is very fond of emacs' traditional
>     bindings, but they do make emacs more difficult to learn than
>     emacs+CUA.
> 
> Why do you think the traditional Emacs bindings are harder to learn
> than these bindings?

It is not a question of which bindings are harder to learn -- it's a
question of whether it is necessary to learn any bindings at all.

When a new user is trying emacs for the first time, I bet that he
already knows about scrolling using arrow keys, home/end, pgup/pgdn,
and if he is just a little experienced in other applications, there is
also a good chance that he already knows about C-c to copy, C-x to
cut, C-z to undo and C-v to paste.

Since emacs already has the capability to support the bindings that
the user already knows, there is really no need to teach (and confuse)
a new user an alternative way to move the cursor (which is a fairly
large part of the tutorial).

So while your point is that to use emacs, the user must be taught a
non-standard set of cursor movement bindings, my point is that if we
allow a user to build on his current experience gained from other
applications, he can more quickly learn to use emacs as a whole.

Of course, if he later want to learn how to use emacs more efficiently
(and he is a good typist), he can start learning about C-f, C-b, for
cursor motion.


It is true that changing the translations of the tutorials is a big
task, but maybe it would pay off in the end.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk