Re: What's your favourite *under_publicized* editing feature ofEmacs?

[Rafe Kettler]

On Feb 23, 12:19 am, Cthun <cthun_...@qmail.net.au> wrote:
> On 22/02/2011 9:33 PM, Rafe Kettler wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 22, 9:06 pm, Cthun<cthun_...@qmail.net.au>  wrote:
> >> On 22/02/2011 2:47 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>
> >>> There seems to be a contradiction between those last two paragraphs.
> >>> Saving buffers and finding files are relatively rare operations which
> >>> thus shouldn't be given very easy to press key sequences like C-s and
> >>> C-o.
>
> >> Where do you live where software never crashes and the electricity never
> >> goes out? Most of us learn to save very frequently to limit how much
> >> we'll have to do over again if the power goes out or whatever.
>
> > Emacs is really, really stable. My computer hasn't crashed in the past
> > 6 months, either. The power hasn't gone out in 3 months or so here
> > (eastern US).
>
> > Save and open are relatively infrequent command relative to others
> > (actual typing, cursor movement, etc.).
>
> Yeah, but for "actual typing" you only need the normal
> alphanumeric/symbol keys (no ctrl- or alt- combos) and for cursor
> movement, the arrow/home/end/etc. key group to the right of the main
> keyboard area. You've got loads and loads of ctrl-letter and ctrl-number
> combinations still after exhausting all of these more-frequent actions.
>
> And then not everyone lives somewhere where the power is that reliable.
>
> And then not everyone is daft enough not to fork their file before doing
> something truly drastic to it, especially large elisions.
>
> And then, of course, there's the tendency of operating systems to
> blue-screen, laptops to overheat and hang, etc. no matter how stable the
> editor application is.

You must be a Windows user. You must also not be an Emacs power user,
because you think it's acceptable to use the arrow keys as cursors. If
you don't, please use C-b, C-f, C-p, and C-n in place of the arrow
keys. It dramatically improves speed.

Rafe