Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[T.V Raman]

emacs kbd commands -- and other well-designed ergonomic systems, eg
vi's h,j,k,l for navigation are better thought of as muscle
memory. The mnemonics are useful to learn, yes, but given the weird
layout of the qwerty keyboard,  rigidly sticking to mnemonics often
leads to non-ergonomic keybindings.

So it's always a choice --- does one wish to create a system that is
"easy to learn" but painful to use, or one that "a little harder to
learn" with the benefit of being extremely efficient in the
long-run. I still think VI's nav keys are one of the best choices I've
seen from an ergonomics point of view, but completely "unintuitive"
for whatever "intuitive" means.
excalamus@tutanota.com writes:
 > May 28, 2020, 12:04 by raman@google.com:
 > 
 > > "Philip K." <philip@warpmail.net> writes:
 > >
 > >
 > > It's no more or no less intuitive than alt-F4 in "other platforms" that
 > > people often label intuitive without thinking about it.
 > >
 > > And for the record, the insert/replace key is a carry-over from
 > > DOS word-processors of the early 80's.
 > >
 > >> excalamus--- via "Emacs development discussions."
 > >>
 > > <emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes: 
 > >
 > >>> What does C-g mean? Why the sequence C-g specifically? I think the
 > >>> disconnect may be that C-g appears outwardly meaningless.
 > >>>
 > >>
 > >> I always assumed it was because C-g, when inserted literally had the
 > >> same value as does the ASCII bell (BEL, or '\a' in C) character. When
 > >> you open the "ascii" man-page on G and BEL even appear on the same
 > >> line. So in some sense it's like C-m/C-i, that do the same as
 > >> return/tab. 
 > >>
 > >> But I guess that's neither consistent, relavant or intuitive.
 > >>
 > These are excellent observations (and I always love the history I learn 
 > through being an Emacs user).  Arguably, 'C-g' is one of the most important 
 > keybindings/functions in Emacs.  It's unfortunate that there's not a clear 
 > winner for a mnemonic.  "Get out" or "Get away" is the best I can come up 
 > with for English.  I tried translating the following possible 
 > interpretations to other languages (German, French, Spanish) and "giro" 
 > ("turn" in Spanish, apparently) was the 'best'.  
 > 
 > cancel
 > escape
 > abort
 > terminate
 > scrub
 > curtail
 > stop
 > discontinue
 > cease
 > counteract
 > redirect
 > avert
 > undo
 > disengage
 > avert
 > deflect
 > abstain
 > divert
 > reversal
 > turnabout
 > doubleback
 > turnaround
 > reverse
 > repeal
 > retract
 > annul

-- 
Id: kg:/m/0285kf1 

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Id: kg:/m/0285kf1