Re: Successfully merged projects

[Richard Crozier]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> 
> 
> I assumed you had some basic knowledge of this notation.
> 
> 

It is this kind of assumption which is the one of the reasons you think
emacs is so simple, and I think it's so hard.


John W. Eaton wrote:
> 
> OK, are we talking about a recent GNU Emacs (say 23.x) or something
> else?
> 

GNU emacs 21.4.1 is the version most easily available to me. I have actually
got it working when connecting from a different machine, but now another
example of difficulty. I went to the help menu and clicked on 'show emacs
version', and the info was displayed at the bottom. I wanted to use the info
in this reply, so I thought I'd just copy and paste it, but clicking on the
area where it appeared made the info disappear and I get the message
'Minibuffer window is not active'. This is not intuitive behaviour.


John W. Eaton wrote:
> 
> 
> But even without that, you can still use a recent version of GNU Emacs
> on a modern system to edit a file at least as well as using Notepad or
> pico, I think.  You don't need any control keys or meta commands to
> enter text and save it to a file, or to open an existing file and edit
> it and save it.  You can use the mouse and arrow keys to move around
> and entering text just works.
> 
> 

But I don't just want to just enter text, I'm only learning to use it so I
can use the Octave features! 

Another example, I choose 'open file' from the menu, I don't get a directory
browser or anything like that, I get a message saying 'find file: ~/' at the
bottom. Now what should I do. Can I just type the file name and emacs will
magically find the file in my system, or must I know by heart the directory
location of the file? Can I navigate to a directory by typing some commands
or something? I haven't a clue.

Another example, when I launch emacs I get the welcome screen with the logo.
I click on this and get the next screen where there's a message:

;;This buffer is for notes...  blah blah

I highlight the text to copy into this reply and right click to copy,
assuming I'll get a context menu with an option to copy. I have to do this
because I already know neither C-c or SHIFT+CTRL+c will copy as the key
bindings are different. There is no context menu, so I give up. Oh, and what
is a buffer? Of course I now know what a buffer is (I think), but seriously,
does it have to be this hard?


John W. Eaton wrote:
> 
> 
> What program do you use for editing text files?
> 
> 

I use texniccentre for LaTeX, the matlab editor for m files, Visual Studio
Express editions for windows .NET projects and debugging C++ mex files, I'm
using the Qt Editor for QtOctave. For everything else I use ConTEXT. On
Linux I usually use gedit. I don't do much development on Linux as the
machine in my office is a windows machine, and people who don't know better
send me documents and things as .doc files and excel files etc. and I also
have some windows only programs I use for my research. Several of those
editors also have the advantage of an integrated help system, so for
instance I can highlight a function, press F1 and go to the documentation
for the function. In the matlab editor I can highlight a function, right
click on it and choose open help. This opens a little mini help browser
window. Sure I could just type 'help xxxx' at the command prompt, but the
help browser has properly formatted mathematical equations, and headings and
links to other functions etc. etc. 

I didn't need any time to learn to use these tools, they were intuitive to
use! There was no major investment in just getting started. Sure, this may
be because of my previous experience of a windows based environment, but
that's almost everyone's experience now. I prefer to do things using codes
and scripts and text commands, but it's good to be able to get started
without having to know any commands whatsoever.

I am sure I could replace all these editors with emacs, if I could just
figure out how to open a file!


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