4 ms·

>Is there a context from which Emacs' defaults are bad, other than "Windows did it differently!" ? There are dozens of low hanging fruit. Off the top of my he

by na85 4y ago

>Is there a context from which Emacs' defaults are bad, other than "Windows did it differently!" ? There are dozens of low hanging fruit. Off the top of my head: - dispensing with the absurd references to Alt as Meta that haven't been relevant for 35 years - bringing the terminology in the documentation into the 2000s by fixing what's called window, a pane, etc. - including CUA mode as default for ease of onboarding windows users - including per-pixel/smooth scrolling which AFAICT is only available via the emacs-mac port - updating the graphical interface to make it look modern and sophisticated instead of the current look which can best be described as "abandonware chic" - improving handling of large files with long lines so the editor doesn't choke - setting the gc threshold to a much higher value - the yes/no vs y/n thing that literally everyone rebinds - make middle click insert at the cursor instead of where the mouse is I'm certain there are dozens of others.

amake 4y ago
> - including per-pixel/smooth scrolling which AFAICT is only available via the emacs-mac port The master branch (Emacs 29) has this in `pixel-scroll-precision-mode` and it seems to perform better than the emacs-mac implementation.
JasonFruit 4y ago
I anticipated being able to agree with you more than I do. Long lines, GC, yes, the rest, no.
- na85 4y ago
  By your own statement in another comment you "think it's perfect". It would seem you and I have very little common ground.
  - JasonFruit 4y ago
    I meant the word 'grognard'. Many of us are greybeards still fighting the last war.
gpderetta 4y ago
The problem with changing the wondow/pane nomenclature is that it is tied with the naming of many elisp functions. Changing the first without the others would be confusing and changing the elisp functions is going to pointlessly break compatibility with thousands of scripts.
iib 4y ago
- The Meta key was surprisingly a nice thing as I moved to a macbook, as I already didn't think of an Alt as Alt, but I agree, it should be changed. - Richard Stallman was actually ok with this change, he said that it should take a couple of releases so that users don't get confused, but he was in principle ok with it. - This will be very hard to change, for two reasons: Emacs is older than these conventions, and the mailing list argument was that it is not the fault of Emacs that CUA was a mistake, as it didn't follow earlier conventions that Emacs did. The second reason is that Emacs is primarily a bridge from Windows to GNU, so GNU users will be treated with priority. - This is solved in emacs-29, and it works quite nicely. - This is in the works, but it is hard work, see the pgtk branch. - There are elpa packages for these, like vlf, but I agree it should be more of a priority in core Emacs. I think there are always efforts to improve these as well. - Perhaps, they have been conservative with these values. - I think there is also a mode for that, but it should be done in core. I think one of the arguments here was that sometimes, it is better to make the user type "yes" instead of "y", for more critical actions. - I have no comment on this one, but I would add the ability to scroll without the point--cursor--following me around. The main problem, as they often mention on the mailing list, is that the manpower is low. There is no reason they don't want to solve the large technical problems, like very large files.

by na85 4y ago

amake 4y ago

> - including per-pixel/smooth scrolling which AFAICT is only available via the emacs-mac port The master branch (Emacs 29) has this in `pixel-scroll-precision-mode` and it seems to perform better than the emacs-mac implementation.

JasonFruit 4y ago

I anticipated being able to agree with you more than I do. Long lines, GC, yes, the rest, no.

na85 4y ago
By your own statement in another comment you "think it's perfect". It would seem you and I have very little common ground.
- JasonFruit 4y ago
  I meant the word 'grognard'. Many of us are greybeards still fighting the last war.

gpderetta 4y ago

The problem with changing the wondow/pane nomenclature is that it is tied with the naming of many elisp functions. Changing the first without the others would be confusing and changing the elisp functions is going to pointlessly break compatibility with thousands of scripts.

iib 4y ago

- The Meta key was surprisingly a nice thing as I moved to a macbook, as I already didn't think of an Alt as Alt, but I agree, it should be changed. - Richard Stallman was actually ok with this change, he said that it should take a couple of releases so that users don't get confused, but he was in principle ok with it. - This will be very hard to change, for two reasons: Emacs is older than these conventions, and the mailing list argument was that it is not the fault of Emacs that CUA was a mistake, as it didn't follow earlier conventions that Emacs did. The second reason is that Emacs is primarily a bridge from Windows to GNU, so GNU users will be treated with priority. - This is solved in emacs-29, and it works quite nicely. - This is in the works, but it is hard work, see the pgtk branch. - There are elpa packages for these, like vlf, but I agree it should be more of a priority in core Emacs. I think there are always efforts to improve these as well. - Perhaps, they have been conservative with these values. - I think there is also a mode for that, but it should be done in core. I think one of the arguments here was that sometimes, it is better to make the user type "yes" instead of "y", for more critical actions. - I have no comment on this one, but I would add the ability to scroll without the point--cursor--following me around. The main problem, as they often mention on the mailing list, is that the manpower is low. There is no reason they don't want to solve the large technical problems, like very large files.