Re: Rapidly navigating buffers using search

[Xah Lee]

On Jul 7, 3:25 am, Jonathan Groll <li...@groll.co.za> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 07, 2010 at 11:33:51AM +0200, Deniz Dogan wrote:
> >2010/7/7 Andrea Crotti <andrea.crott...@gmail.com>:
>
> >>> The idea though is to move point to the text you are interested
> >>> in. C-g leaves you back where you started from.
>
> >> If you press RET doesn't it leave you where you want exiting the search?
>
> >That's right, Emacs even echoes "Mark saved where search started" when
> >you use RET.
>
> Thanks, this is something that I didn't realised until now, and have
> been using emacs for a couple of years... and it is right there in the
> manual under "basics of incremental search" too.

same here. I started to use emacs daily since 1998, and i didn't
realize that Enter will exit the search and leave the cursor at the
current location untill 2007 or so. I've always just used left/right
arrow. (and a year or two later, i also found out that it is right in
the manual. These happened only when i started to get more involved in
writing a emacs tutorial)

this situation of us using emacs for 5 or 10 years and often found
something basics we don't know about. I think that means there's
something wrong with the manual. People here often try to get other to
read the manual, but the fact is most of us, even dedicated emacs
fans, just don't read the manual and or don't have time to.

the manual is written mostly in the 1980s. The whole structure,
design, mindset. I think the manual can be cut 50% and become more
functional. Many 1980s terminologies could also use a update.

 Xah