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Re: Problems with Emacs


From: LanX
Subject: Re: Problems with Emacs
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 16:16:16 -0800 (PST)
User-agent: G2/1.0

> So there is easy customization of a *lot* of features.

But yeah, as I said it's slow (especially the customization tree) and
very one dimensional.

And there is no button just to list the customization options of the
current main or minor modes only.

And it's bloated with unimportant things.

> > Other products have much more popup intuitive *dialogs* and icons.
>
> What is unintuitive about the customize-group interface? There are
> buttons for everything. Do you just mean that it looks different from
> "normal" GUI programs?

No, one example:

In Komodo the corespondent for "(C-u) M-x shell-command" is "run
command" showing a very simple  *dialog*

http://kb.worldviz.com/files/komodo2.png

As you can see all important options are presented at a glance in an
overview, the unexperienced user can play around without having to
read "C-h f shell-command". He can quickly understand that the
checkboxes are toggles not like in customization where toggles are
binary variables to be set. He doesn't have to remember much.

He can expand for more sophisticated options by clicking "More".

A click on the "Arrow" will show a drop down list of special
parameters like %F for the path of the actual file (I remember once
searching the emacs-info for ages only to find out how to customize
this!!!)

Selecting "Help" will show the documentation directly in another
window. In emacs I have to stop editing and type "C-h f command-name"
for describe-function or "C-h F command-name" for the info-help. (And
strangely there are no clickable cross-references between those main
help sources in emacs!)

And best of all you can add this run-command to a "tool-box" an
outline which presents all project specific macros and commands and so
on in a ready to execute or edit by click way.

Of course most of this could easily be simulated in emacs with a
combination of org-mode and yasnippet dialogs, but how is a new user
supposed to know this?

This graphical *dialog* OTOH gives him the possibility to be
productive from the first moment, to have an overview of possible
options and  explore them easily.

> Yes. Emacs lacks a way to define projects.

Actually I have no clear idea or definition what a "project" is, I
hope investigating Komodo will give me some insights.


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