Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[tomas]

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On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:10:02PM +0300, Filipp Gunbin wrote:
> On 13/05/2015 09:47 +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> > Most user nowadays will be happy to use the (these days) conventional
> > cursor keys for movement [...]

> When using arrow keys for movement there's a danger that Emacs will turn
> into one big inconvenience.

This is obviously in the eye (rather the finger) of the beholder. I wasn't
advocating to remove the traditional movement keys in Emacs. I was rather
questioning that they deserve such a prominent place in a beginner's
tutorial (although a link, with a short explanation of their advantages
seems to make a lot of sense in any case).

> Rather, large amount of different keys to remember could lead to
> thinking of a suitable typing scheme and that's imho is an enjoyable
> thing.

Different finger memories, different models. The key bindings of the
arrow keys (with and without modifiers) might make more sense to some --
especially when you have an "exotic" keyboard layout: cf. the other
current thread in this list. At least, the arrow keys stay invariant.

> When I realized that right-hand modifiers can be used as well as
> left-hand, it made my experience much more pleasant.

Yep, and with some binding magic one can re-use those funny (nowadays
nearly ubiquitous) "Windows" keys. But this is all advanced material,
where our topic here is "Tutorial(s) for beginners".

I'm not for hiding that information -- but thinking about a short,
wide path to start with, showing hints to all sorts of (narrower)
side paths, to let people "grow" at their own pace.

regards
- -- tomás
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