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

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 09.02.2021 17:59, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> 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.

And they'll go away with an impression that Emacs is clunky and baroque.

Especially combined with its peculiar 'redo' mechanics. Which is not 
productive compared to modern counterparts, no matter how many years you 
spend with Emacs.

> 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.

It's a good explanation for why things can be what they are now, but not 
why we wouldn't want to ever change them.

> 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.

Unlike GIMP or Photoshop, Emacs is not a special-purpose program. We 
expect it to be useful to a wide range of professions. Nor is it a 
console editor. So it should make sense to make an effort to accommodate 
all different kinds of people.

If it were just a niche old-style editor, I would have left long ago, 
and some of the people here might have missed the improvements I have 
contributed over the years.