RE: [h-e-w] EmacsW32, gnuserv, pathes in .emacs

[Nat Goodspeed]

At 04:52 AM 7/11/2006, Drew Adams wrote:

> The key requirement would be to somehow point out clearly which are the
> things you really should learn first - distinguishing those from other
> interesting things to learn, which are not so essential. Make it clear to
> users - label the routes (like ski slopes?).

  Hmm, but as you say later, that quickly becomes a matter of taste, 
doesn't it? I note that the OP mentioned "rectangle editing" in his 
third bullet. Would that have been one of your top few?
  (I've been using emacs for about 20 years. I'm embarrassed to 
admit that it was only about a year ago that I found and downloaded 
rect-mark.el. I knew from when I first chose to learn emacs that I 
could *write* something like that -- but I didn't know it already 
existed. Sigh.)

>     > how to get help and how to customize
>     > Emacs (that is, how to set preferences)
>     > are also important for general use.
>
>     The philosophy is that the default Emacs should
>     work well enough for the new user not to be
>     bothered by customization for quite some time.
>
> I have never, ever, ever seen anyone use Emacs as is, out of the box. Do you
> use only emacs -q? I'd be willing to bet on that one.

  One of my best friends, who's been a professional programmer for 
nearly as long as I, refuses to touch emacs -- despite my frequent 
suggestions! -- because of its default key bindings.
  I grant that at this point in emacs history, you CAN'T change its 
default key bindings without infuriating emacs veterans waking it up 
on a new box. People with fingers that flexible can throw stones with 
unbelievable rapidity.
  But let's face it, many of those key bindings -- the core ones -- 
date back to dumb terminals on which you might not even have arrow 
keys, and 'ctrl' was the only key modifier. You had to (e.g.) press 
esc, shift-greater to jump to the end of a buffer.
  Before emacs I used an early PC-DOS editor which, for all its many 
limitations, turned out to be uncommonly well thought out. Surprise! 
The more I began learning about emacs, the more I realized the 
authors of my previous favorite editor had obviously set out to write 
a "baby emacs" suitable for the then-severely-underpowered PC.
  BUT -- since they knew every user had function keys, cursor keys, 
page keys, home/end keys, etc. etc., their default key bindings were 
comfortable: common tasks took ONE finger. I quickly became familiar 
with their conventions.
  So the very first thing I tried to do with real emacs was to 
borrow a .emacs file in which I could customize the key bindings to 
mimic what my fingers already knew. Some were difficult to figure 
out. (I'm STILL not sure what's the best way to hook ctrl-i 
separately from the many, many useful bindings for the Tab key.) And 
as you say, maybe starting from scratch with a brand-new version of 
emacs would be considerably easier than what I went through.
  Okay, that's a very long-winded way of supporting your position 
that customization is important. It IS the reason I chose emacs, and 
it's why I happily stay with it.