Re: On being web-friendly and why info must die

[Tom]

Filipp Gunbin <fgunbin <at> fastmail.fm> writes:
> 
> You write about a "pre-Web mindset".  But what is a proper "Web-midset",
> then?  I see my colleagues googling nearly everything while they can
> access most of it locally (like Javadocs - I'm a Java developer). 

I often use google to lookup something which I also have locally,because
usually it is much faster. Even for emacs docs. Google does word stemming
and alternatives, so if you search for something related "modification"
then google also finds matches with "changing", "altering", etc.

So if you don't know the exact wording of what you are looking for
then google is faster most of the time.

Info, for example, cannot do this, so it is faster only if you already
know what you are looking for, you know the exact term, etc. In other
cases, when looking up something new and unfamiliar in the docs, using
Google is usually more efficient.

> And this largely reminds me the discussion "make CUA the default because
> it will attract new users familiar with Word/Notepad/etc.).

It's not about attracting, it's about eliminating arbitrary barriers
of entry. When popular systems use CUA keys then it is a barrier for
new users if they have to relearn these keys just for emacs. For this
reason it would make sense to make CUA keys the default, and provide
a compatibility switch for Emacs old timers who are used to the current
bindings.