Re: Making Emacs more newbie friendly

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: PT <mailshield.gg@mailnull.com>
> Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 06:40:54 +0100
> 
> > C-h t
> 
> That's exactly what I meant. The key bindings shown in the tutorial are  
> leftovers from a world when there were no arrow keys on keyboards.

??? When was the last time you've read the tutorial?  The current
version does mention the arrow keys, and it also explains the reasons
why the tutorial teaches the alternate key bindings.  (One reason it
does not mention -- that the arrow keys should be known to everyone --
is so obvious that I'd expect each user to not expect these keys to be
mentioned in the tutorial.)

If you think the tutorial text should be changed somehow to be more
friendly to newbies, please suggest specific changes to it (but be
sure to read the current version first!), and send your suggestions to
emacs-devel@gnu.org.  TIA.

> I may sound like a heretic, but I don't think a newbie should learn new  
> keybindings for cursor movement.

Newbies don't _have_ to learn them, but the tutorial explains why
Emacs developers _suggest_ that they do.

> VI is not a more usual editor. KEdit is. Notepad is.

If someone is happy with Notepad, they probably don't need Emacs.  And
btw, Notepad doesn't have _any_ key bindings besides the arrow keys,
CUA cut/paste ones (which Emacs supports), and F3 for FindNext.  So a
convert from Notepad should have no problem learning the Emacs
keybindings.

> >>    F1 for help, F2 for save file, F3 for load file, etc.
> >
> > Where did you find these keybindings?  I've never seen them!  You call
> > them Familiar???
> 
> You are probably a Unix veteran. They are familiar to anyone on Windows  
> for example and much more friendly than C-x C-f.

Please be specific; slogans are not useful when you are criticizing a
UI.  So please give us a list of Windows programs that use those F1-F3
bindings, which make them ``familiar to anyone on Windows''.  Emacs
does support "F1 for help", as you probably should have known, so only
F2, F3, and whatever hides under ``etc.'' are the issue.

> The idea is to relieve the initial pain of meeting Emacs the first time,  
> so that they don't give it up in disgust, before they get to know it  
> better.

That's a goal that Emacs developers will always applaud.  But please
give specific suggestions, and please post them to
emacs-devel@gnu.org, since most Emacs developers don't read this
forum.