Re: A more modest proposal (Was: Emacs learning curve)

[Stephen Eilert]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 3:18 AM, Daniel Colascione
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On 7/17/10 10:51 AM, Chong Yidong wrote:
>
>> No, having CUA mode on by default is off the table.
>
> Agreed, but there are a few less disruptive ideas that are still worth
> considering:
>
> 1) cua-selection-mode, or its moral equivalent
>
> cua-selection-mode doesn't play games C-c and C-x or interfere with any
> normal Emacs keybinding, but it does give users bindings for
> control-insert, shift-insert, and shift-delete.
>
> These keystrokes perform "copy", "paste", and "cut", respectively, and
> the same keystrokes do similar things in other CUA applications --- it's
> be easy to tell users, "unlike most programs, Emacs does not use C-c,
> C-x, and C-v for copy and paste: Emacs was old when these bindings were
> new, and they're used for something very different in Emacs. But Emacs
> *does* support using Control-Insert, Shift-Delete, and Shift-Insert for
> copy, cut, and paste. So do most other programs; learn to use these keys
> instead."
>
> 2) More descriptive minibuffer messages for key chords
>
> Right now, pressing C-c by itself simply displays "C-c -"; C-x is
> similar. Novice users would benefit if this message read something like
> "C-c - <waiting for command - C-h for help>" instead so that they notice
> faster that C-c and C-x are very different in Emacs.
>
> 3) Natural binding for C-z
>
> Bind C-z by default to this function:
>
> (defun undo-or-suspend-emacs ()
>  "Undo if we're in a windowing system, or suspend emacs if we're in a TTY"
>  (interactive)
>  (setq this-command (if window-system 'undo 'suspend-emacs))
>  (call-interactively this-command))
>
>
> Adopting this binding will ensure Emacs has the most natural and common
> behavior on C-z for a given environment. Besides, not much of value is
> lost: why bother with C-z in a windowing system when the system probably
> provides its own idiomatic way of minimizing a window?
>

Indeed; how often one suspends/minimizes Emacs?

This does seem to be a waste of a major keystroke.


--Stephen

Sent from my Emacs