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Two more quick tips: 1. The "kill ring" (what other interface cultures might call a clipboard) is a circular stack, not just one slot. If you try to paste ("ya

Two more quick tips: 1. The "kill ring" (what other interface cultures might call a clipboard) is a circular stack, not just one slot. If you try to paste ("yank") and discover you cut/copied over what you meant to paste, you can hit alt-Y (or M-x yank-pop) to replace it with successively earlier things. When you reach the end, it loops back to the newest. I think it has a stupid name, but it's really useful. 2. Learn the terminology. Emacs came of of a very different user interface culture, and sometimes feels like it came from a parallel universe. The documentation (info pages, apropos, etc.) become much easier to search when you know what various parts of the interface are actually called. I don't know of any "Emacs to vernacular Windows/Mac/Linux interface cliche" glossary, but reading through the documentation, even what should be the really basic parts (e.g. "how to open a file", the tutorial) will help you acclimate. ("find-file", buffer, mark, "major mode", etc.) It helps that the Emacs manual is available on the web -- that way, people don't need to figure out how to navigate info pages first. :)

jrockway 18y ago
I think it has a stupid name, but it's really useful. 2. Learn the terminology. You wouldn't think the name was stupid if you followed your second piece of advice. A ring is a data structure that's like a queue, but after it fills up, the old elements go away. The kill ring is called such because it's a ring that stores killed text.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  The kill/yank names rub me the wrong way because where "cut and paste" suggest X-acto knives and glue sticks to me, that is, editing text on paper, there's no metaphoric grouping between "kill" and "yank". It also makes expressing the act of copying awkward. Copying is called "kill-ring-save", which is a kind of terse "kill-it-but-don't-actually-kill- it-just-copy-it-as-if-you-did". It further breaks down any metaphoric concept tying them together. I'm not arguing that "copy/cut/paste" are better terms because they're already used by most people, but rather because they collectively express the operations in terms of an existing, analogous, and likely familiar idea. (I think the "ring" part of it is perfect, though.)

jrockway 18y ago

I think it has a stupid name, but it's really useful. 2. Learn the terminology. You wouldn't think the name was stupid if you followed your second piece of advice. A ring is a data structure that's like a queue, but after it fills up, the old elements go away. The kill ring is called such because it's a ring that stores killed text.

silentbicycle 18y ago
The kill/yank names rub me the wrong way because where "cut and paste" suggest X-acto knives and glue sticks to me, that is, editing text on paper, there's no metaphoric grouping between "kill" and "yank". It also makes expressing the act of copying awkward. Copying is called "kill-ring-save", which is a kind of terse "kill-it-but-don't-actually-kill- it-just-copy-it-as-if-you-did". It further breaks down any metaphoric concept tying them together. I'm not arguing that "copy/cut/paste" are better terms because they're already used by most people, but rather because they collectively express the operations in terms of an existing, analogous, and likely familiar idea. (I think the "ring" part of it is perfect, though.)