Re: Gather a list of confusions beginner tend to have

[Praharsh Suryadevara]

Hello, 

I've been an emacs user for ~3 years. While I'm now used to the defaults, I do remember in some detail, the pain it took me to get used to the keybindings in vanilla emacs .

I think the sore points other than the undo/redo, were C-f not being bound to find, (though that would need remapping forward-char), C-o not being bound open file. I do think it might make sense to poll on reddit. and again to clarify _(I don't think any of these ideas would break backward compatibility, but instead only add options to increase familiarity with vanilla emacs for new users)_

@yuan I was following the threads earlier and I checked the idea of a profile was suggested https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-04/msg02032.html, I think a starter wizard could go well with this as a base for keymaps at least if you're thinking about implementing it (?). The other thing I was thinking was maybe you could write directly to init.el with use-package with comments in an understandable manner following the discussion about custom here https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-09/msg00306.html. I think this would teach and encourage users to tweak their configurations which I think would be a win-win.

I would be willing to contribute some time to this.

Thanks,

Praharsh

On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 2:31 PM Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 8, 2020, at 2:48 PM, Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I think everybody would agree on attracting more people to use
>> Emacs—that means more blogs and help, more contributor, etc. And
>> people agree that Emacs isn’t as beginner-friendly as it could be. The
>> problem is what to improve, and how.
>
> Not necessarily.  Personally, I don’t see much benefit in trying to
> appeal users that have no background in coding whatsoever, and users who
> wouldn’t really benefit from what Emacs has to offer.
>
>> As the first step, we should collect real experiences from real
>> beginners: someone starts to use Emacs just recently (e.g., less than
>> one year).
>
> The major problem is that someone who fiddled with Emacs now and
> couldn’t make use of it may think differently when a couple years later
> they have some knowledge of programming (not necessarily professionally)
> and some experience with other tools.
>
> Anecdotally, I’ve picked up and quit Emacs multiple times before I
> decided to stay with it.  And it’s been more than 6 years now that I’m
> using it for the good part of my computing.  What was puzzling and weird
> to me back then is useful and essential to me now.
>
> What I mean is, what is good for newcomers, who are not guaranteed to
> stay, can be irrelevant, not so good, or even off-putting to actual
> users of this package of software.  Emacs is a power tool, and like all
> power tools, requires two preconditions to be useful: 1) the user should
> *need* the tool, and 2) the user should be willing to put in the time to
> learn the tool.  And a good power tool is designed with user who need
> and use them the most in mind.
>
> IDK. IMHO, we shouldn’t break stuff in Emacs itself, and maybe promote
> distros for people that want a more "modern" experience instead.  They
> don’t have the backwards compatibility baggage of Emacs so they will do
> it better than Emacs core nevertheless.
>
> --
> İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp / @cadadr / <https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
> pgp:   024C 30DD 597D 142B 49AC 40EB 465C D949 B101 2427
>

I generally agree with your point. However, what I have in mind is not changing defaults, but rather a configuration wizard, that can prompt user and let him select from Emacs binding vs CUA binding, Emacs undo vs simple undo/redo, themes, etc. I’ve seen such wizard in Intellj Idea, Spacemacs, etc. Something like (just an example):


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Set UI themes:

<some C code>

- [ ] default
- [ ] dark
- [ ] ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Keybinding notation:

    C (control)   Ctrl
    M (meta)      Alt/Option
    s (super)     Windows/Command
    S (shift)     Shift

Set keybinding style for copy/paste:

[ ] default

    M-w           Copy
    C-y           Paste
    C-w           Cut

[ ] alternative

    C-c           Copy
    C-v           Paste
    C-x           Cut


[Next] [Skip]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[ ] Enable line numbers

[ ] Use thin cursor

[ ] Disable tool bar

[ ] Disable scroll bar


[Next] [Skip]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Emacs has a powerful (but possibly unintuitive) undo system, where
undo operations themselves are recorded in the undo history, and redo
is done by undoing an previous undo operation.

Set undo style:

[ ] default

    C-/           Undo

[ ] linear

    C-/           Undo
    C-?           Redo

[ ] alternative

    C-z           Undo
    C-S-z         Redo


[Next] [Skip]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional packages:

[ ] Company

      Popup completion.
      <gif>


[ ] Ivy

      Completion for opening files, executing commands, etc.
      <gif>


[ ] Expand-region

      Incrementally expand selection.
      <gif>


[ ] Which-key

      Shows possible keybindings.
      <gif>


[Finish]  You can re-run this guide by M-x beginner-guide RET


Yuan