Re: Emacs learning curve

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:41:25 +0200, Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> From: Tom <address@hidden>
>>> Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:36:46 +0000 (UTC)
>>>
>>> Is there a compelling reason to still use yank/kill, instead of 
>>> copy/cut/paste?
>>
>> From the Emacs manual:
>>
>>  * Killing::           Killing (cutting) text.
>>  * Yanking::           Recovering killed text.  Moving text. (Pasting.)
>>
>> and then:
>>
>>    12 Killing and Moving Text
>>    **************************
>>
>>    "Killing" means erasing text and copying it into the "kill ring", from
>>    which you can bring it back into the buffer by "yanking" it.  (Some
>>    applications use the terms "cutting" and "pasting" for similar
>>    operations.)
>
> I think it is quite clear from this text that there is no logical
> reason any more not to use the common terms copy/cut/paste.

Not really, but this hasn't stopped people from arguing about it.  There
are tunables and functions called `kill-xxx', e.g.:

    kill-ring
    kill-ring-max
    kill-ring-save
    ...

If we change the manual to only use cut/paste then we have to find a new
name for `kill-ring', a new name for the associated functions or
variables, and we will probably have to go through a period of backwards
compatibility that supports both spellings of these options.

Then even if we stop supporting the `kill-xxx' names in the trunk of
Emacs, there will still be packages out there in the wild that break in
amusing ways just because of the rename.

Terminology is important, I don't disagree about this point.  I do have
a few reservations about the statement that kill/yank are less useful
than cut/paste though.  Both are, after all, just conventions that we
have chosen to describe a particular concept.  Once you read through the
manual *once* you know the useful terms and their meanings, so the main
problem of cut/paste = kill/yank goes away.