Re: .emacs poser

[Emanuel Berg]

Tilman Ahr <tilman.ahr@mailbox.tu-berlin.de> writes:

> Although I'd *hate* to have to use that to get Ä,Ö,Ü
> and ß. I use those *a lot* when writing in German,
> and the DE-DE layout makes them accessible by a
> single Keystroke.

Well, I certainly hope so :) That is why the local
keymaps are there. The Swedish keymap is great for
writing in Swedish (of course, because of å, ä, and ö)
but as for programming the US layout is 100 times
better.

A couple of friends were telling me this for several
years. I always told them "I know the keys and
shortcuts on the Swedish keyboard. Why would I spend
time learning new?"  But then I tried it *once* and
immediately understood. It is not about "other" keys
and shortcuts, it is about *better* keys and
shortcuts. For example, when doing C, on the US layout,
';' is one key. On the Swedish ditto, it is *two*. You
don't have to write much more than a hello_word.c demo
to realize how much more pleasant it is not having to
do that extra hit at the end of every line. (And this
is just one example: there are also all the brackets.)

> I do have the „dead keys“ option enabled (to make
> typing the usual accents for french, at least,
> feasible without much ado) and remap CAPSLOCK[1] to
> the compose key, nonetheless.

I also remapped caps to

(defun buffer-menu-files-only ()
  (interactive)
  (buffer-menu t) ) ;; files only

It is better, though I could think of a lot to do with
caps that makes more sense than what it is used for by
default. Only time I miss it was for C_CONSTANTS, so I
configured caps-mode.el (which implements buffer-local
caps) to enable on M-caps, and then automatically
disable when you are done typing the const (i.e., for
example when you hit space).

>> Which by the way is another solution that I think is
>> much better than setting this up in Emacs.
>
> Yes. Definitely. But there are (coff, coff) Operating
> Systems that make using a compose key hard, if not
> impossible...

Yeah, like what?

> Depending on the area one works in, and considering
> how the US civil justice system works(fsvo), I could
> see that. Personally, I know how to create © and ® on
> my keyboard, how I'd get the [TM] symbol, I have no
> Idea. I believe I recall it's trivial with a compose
> key, and should be doable without, but I don't need
> that symbol other than for ironic remarks on usenet,
> and there, [TM] does the trick quite satisfactorily.

Yes, again abbrev mode could be setup if you really
want the "real thing".

> So, in everyday use: Yes, it's mainly used as a
> format for well-defined visual representation of …
> data. And in this day and age of the paperless
> office, these are usually printed out.

PDF is for ambitious documents/manuals/books that
require special notation, are likely to be printed, are
unlikely to be changed more than occasionally, and
should be read by humans, and thus should look the same
on all computers. (That's why it is portable (the P), I
guess.) When all (or most) of those properties hold,
you should use it.

For many cases, ASCII is better, because it is
faster. If you did everything in LaTeX, it would take
twice or thrice the time. You would soon spend more
time pedantically making it look hot, forgetting what
you were doing in the first place.

> I had a job interview last week where the interviewer
> had my e-mail with all the relevant stuff for my
> application (CV, Certificates, References and all
> that) as a PDF on his PCs screen right in front of
> him, but still printed it out. On good paper, using a
> colour ink-jet printer that went to photo mode,
> because there was a photo on the CV (most german
> employers really appreciate a CV with a decent
> photo. No idea why).

It the emotional appeal. It doesn't always make
sense. But it is the way humans work, so why fight it?

>> Groff! Wow, you are a man (pun) of many
>> surprises. Is that used outside of the Unix manpages
>> world?
>
> It used to be. And I remember coming across a couple
> of projects where it was used to nicely format simple
> textual data in an automated way even a few years ago

That's interesting, didn't know that.

> Yes. I like abbrev-mode for larger projects. Takes a
> while to get that up to speed, but when it's ready,
> it flies.

Yes!

> Footnotes: [1] I have no idea why anybody would have
> a use for that key's original function on anything
> but a mechanic typewriter. Other than SHOUTING YOUR
> LUNGS OUT…

*And* for #define C_CONSTANT and for non-parameters in
SQL (SELECT year ... ) - though when you think of it,
that convention probably should be dropped. It is just
that your eyes are used it it, so it will be like
teaching an old dog how to sit.

-- 
Emanuel Berg, programmer-for-rent. CV, projects, etc at uXu
underground experts united:  http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573