Re: Proposal: "C-z <letter>" reserved for users

[Skip Montanaro]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2021 at 6:56 AM Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:

> On 09.02.2021 14:41, Gregory Heytings wrote:
> > Users who are trying Emacs for the first time have a direct access to
> > "Undo": it's in the tool bar, labeled "Undo".  If you put the mouse
> > there, it says "Undo last edits (C-x u)".
>
> That still requires extra research on the part of the user. As well as
> subsequent adaptation.
>

(Apologies, a bit of a rant. I will shut up after this.)

New users are going to be comfortable with the menu bar concept, especially
the first two menus, File and Edit. They will want to undo something, go to
the Edit menu and select "Undo." They might well wonder what C-x u is, but
they will be able to undo without much drama. Maybe someday they will get
curious enough to poke Help in the menu bar and notice the "Emacs Tutorial"
entry.

I get there is a mismatch between the way Emacs operates and how largely
GUI systems like Windows and MacOS operate. Emacs is waaay older than
either of those systems, so it's reasonable that there not be a perfect
match. For a long while after Emacs began to grow GUI capabilities, I
actively disabled the menu bar. I leave it up now, but still don't use it
much. There are a bazillion other GUI-based editors and IDEs out there for
people who don't like the way Emacs operates or prefer the familiarity of
largely GUI-based systems. Some of them even have "Emacs key bindings." If
people want to harness Emacs's strengths, they should realize that it
differs a significant amount from current GUI system design and be willing
to work a bit to understand how to use it efficiently. I wish there was an
Emacs Biography entry in the Help menu. Maybe it's buried in there
somewhere or as a section in the Emacs documentation. Maybe a link to
Wikipedia named Emacs History <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs> would
be sufficient.

Not being a graphic artist, I never had a need to use Photoshop. I simply
don't understand its model of image editing. The most image editing I ever
did was with simple tools like early versions of MacPaint. While I have no
proof, I suspect a semi-competent Photoshop user could pick up the basics
of GIMP pretty quickly. Every once in a while I think, "I'll just fire up
GIMP for this one little thing." I stumble around for a while, accomplish
nothing and eventually run screaming out of the room. I then go back to
kolourpaint. It's not a big deal. If it was really that important I would
spend the time to figure out GIMP, read a book or find a tutorial. I don't
bitch that GIMP doesn't work like kolourpaint. I think Emacs is similar in
that respect. It has a ton of power. Users have to realize that and be
willing to spend some time learning. If all people want to do is enter some
text, they can run Notepad.

Skip