Re: Emacs terminology (not again!?)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:

 > What _should_ be making us think about our priorities is when we lose
 > the input of heavy Emacs users like RMS, Ben Wing, Nix, to Repetitive
 > Strain Injury, and it appears like users of other editors are not
 > affected to a similar degree.

Ben wasn't RSI (the disease affected all of his joints) although the
end effect was very similar.  As for those three examples, I suspect
the controlling factor is that they can write code faster than even
Emacs can help them type it.  I haven't met the other two, but I've
watched Ben work, and his runs of non-stop typing run to minutes, as
if he was a court stenographer trying to keep up with the Devil and
Daniel Webster.[1]

But I think the important point is the one that Lennart made: Emacs's
editing primitives and editor construction language are the important
thing, and the default keymaps are just a way for the community to
standardize things like tutorials and organize new addition to the set
of key-bound commands.  It's a shame that there isn't a powerful
facility for theming keymaps.

Footnotes: 
[1]  American folklore -- Daniel Webster was a lawyer who argued Satan
to a standstill when he came to collect on a sold soul deal.  It took
a while. :-)