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Yank instead of paste. Frame instead of window. Kill instead of delete. kill-ring-save instead of copy. I was going to add 'visit instead of open', but I guess

Yank instead of paste. Frame instead of window. Kill instead of delete. kill-ring-save instead of copy. I was going to add 'visit instead of open', but I guess that bit has changed over the years. C-x C-v no longer invokes 'visit-file'.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago
While I completely get what you're saying it's not really fair to expect Emacs to be compatible with systems that came after it. If you going to work in Emacs you have to pretty much work on its terms, which I think is fairly reasonable and speaking only for myself, I found very worthwhile. If you think it would make it more accessible to have certain changes, email the Emacs issue/bug people with constructive suggestions and see what they say; they are extremely responsive (then try doing the same with Apple or Microsoft and see what happens :-) )
- munch117 3y ago
  I'm a happy Emacs user myself. Nobody change anything for my sake.
- bitwize 3y ago
  It absolutely is fair to expect Emacs to use industry standard terminology to avoid confusing users. At this point, keeping the outdated, idiosyncratic terminology and default UI paradigms serves no purpose except unnecessary gatekeeping. > (then try doing the same with Apple or Microsoft and see what happens :-) ) Microsoft, the authors of Visual Studio Code, the editor most developers use? Whose team has been lauded for being super responsive to developer feedback?
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    > It absolutely is fair to expect Emacs to use industry standard terminology to avoid confusing users "Initial release 1976; 47 years ago" (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs). There was no such standard terminology back then. May I recommend you avoid using Emacs to avoid the concomitant headache of getting involved in Emacs discussions, thank you.It clearly isn't for you.
- schemescape 3y ago
  For the record, the intent of my original post was just to see if someone had already encountered and solved my problem (having difficulty finding Emacs commands, due to inexperience). The use of “archaic”, etc. was meant humorously, and not as a complaint about Emacs. I wouldn’t mind if the maintainers added some more modern synonyms for commonly needed commands, but I wouldn’t expect them to.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    The following is my personal experience only. When I decided to learn Emacs I bought a book (the fat O'Reilly one),sat down and practised the keystrokes. I made a few scratch notes as well. Within a few hours, not days, I found movement to be extremely straightforward and much more comfortable than the old windows/mac way, for the great part. When I was doing my own project I would do most of my work in Emacs but regularly swap back to VStudio because of its LSP support. Swapping back and forth between these two very different environments brought on a few mistakes (wrong key in wrong editor) but astonishingly few. I got comfortable doing switches pretty quickly which is surprising because they are so utterly different, but that's how I found it to be. I ended up spending more time in VS because of better LSP, but built-in LSP support is coming in the next Emacs. Good. Because once I went back to 'standard' keyboard commands, I never felt comfortable. It just doesn't feel right. Also Emacs is so vastly more capable in some ways it just blows VS away. In other ways VS is better certainly, in the more advanced technical stuff such as LSP, in other ways, screw it. So: grab a book, prepared to put in a bit of time, good luck! (Edit: just remembered, I certainly did buy the book but started off doing the built-in Emacs tutorial before that)
    - schemescape 3y ago
      That's a very thoughtful response, thanks. It would be nice if I could see into the future to know whether or not my time spent learning Emacs will pay off :)
      - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
        Good luck with your decision, whichever it is! My only suggestion is avoid Gnus which I found an incredibly flaky mess and regretted ever touching it.
- brokenkebaby 3y ago
  The fact that Emacsen developers started to create text-manipulation terminology earlier is laudable. But it doesn't make Emacsen terms better. From purely pragmatic perspective we have almost a separate language which brings additional barrier for entry, while adding no particular value. I really feel like we stick to sunk-cost fallacy here.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    I fear I may be wasting my time replying, but I'm going to try and understand where you're coming from rather than answer your question about Emacs. Your complaint comes across very much like moaning that strawberries are not the same as cherries. Quite true, and that is exactly why it's a good thing; I would prefer to have a world with strawberries and cherries. Emacs is different from (e.g.) Visual Studio and that's a good thing. Your complaint seems to be that you want Emacs to resemble something else, okay, and after the terminology matches do you want the key bindings to match as well,? And then what do you want? How close in the end, do you want them to look and behave? And if you want them very close, then just use what you're familiar with already and don't worry about us Emacs users. ISTM you are trying to turn Emacs into visual studio, if not then please make it clear what precisely you want other than injecting phrases like "barrier to entry". Please be specific. The biggest barrier to entry for you is yourself; the fact that you're not prepared to try something different. So please tell me, what exactly do you want Emacs to end up looking like, if not a clone of Visual Studio?
    - brokenkebaby 3y ago
      I'm not sure if your answer is for my comment, or you posted it to the wrong thread. If it's the former, could you clarify what part of my comment you answering?
      - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
        You're talking about terminology being a barrier to entry. Terminology is trivial but suppose we changed it (yank -> paste, kill -> cut etc). Now you'll not be happy with the key bindings (C-y to paste, C-k to cut) and want them to be replaced with the Windows/Mac standard – right? Because developing new muscle-memory for a different style of working is a lot heavier than just learning new terms for existing things. Having done that you'll want all the other key bindings changed surely? And I can see it progressing from their – Emacs regular expressions don't behave quite like visual studio IIRC, for example. Search and replace is pretty weird if you're not used to it. Rectangular selection is very different in Emacs from visual studio. etc. If you change Emacs you lose a lot of what makes it Emacs, and good. So if I'm not misrepresenting you, and apologies if I am, I don't see your demands for change stopping until Emacs resembles, perhaps, visual studio, in which case why not just use visual studio? I hope that makes sense.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

While I completely get what you're saying it's not really fair to expect Emacs to be compatible with systems that came after it. If you going to work in Emacs you have to pretty much work on its terms, which I think is fairly reasonable and speaking only for myself, I found very worthwhile. If you think it would make it more accessible to have certain changes, email the Emacs issue/bug people with constructive suggestions and see what they say; they are extremely responsive (then try doing the same with Apple or Microsoft and see what happens :-) )

munch117 3y ago
I'm a happy Emacs user myself. Nobody change anything for my sake.
bitwize 3y ago
It absolutely is fair to expect Emacs to use industry standard terminology to avoid confusing users. At this point, keeping the outdated, idiosyncratic terminology and default UI paradigms serves no purpose except unnecessary gatekeeping. > (then try doing the same with Apple or Microsoft and see what happens :-) ) Microsoft, the authors of Visual Studio Code, the editor most developers use? Whose team has been lauded for being super responsive to developer feedback?
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  > It absolutely is fair to expect Emacs to use industry standard terminology to avoid confusing users "Initial release 1976; 47 years ago" (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs). There was no such standard terminology back then. May I recommend you avoid using Emacs to avoid the concomitant headache of getting involved in Emacs discussions, thank you.It clearly isn't for you.
schemescape 3y ago
For the record, the intent of my original post was just to see if someone had already encountered and solved my problem (having difficulty finding Emacs commands, due to inexperience). The use of “archaic”, etc. was meant humorously, and not as a complaint about Emacs. I wouldn’t mind if the maintainers added some more modern synonyms for commonly needed commands, but I wouldn’t expect them to.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  The following is my personal experience only. When I decided to learn Emacs I bought a book (the fat O'Reilly one),sat down and practised the keystrokes. I made a few scratch notes as well. Within a few hours, not days, I found movement to be extremely straightforward and much more comfortable than the old windows/mac way, for the great part. When I was doing my own project I would do most of my work in Emacs but regularly swap back to VStudio because of its LSP support. Swapping back and forth between these two very different environments brought on a few mistakes (wrong key in wrong editor) but astonishingly few. I got comfortable doing switches pretty quickly which is surprising because they are so utterly different, but that's how I found it to be. I ended up spending more time in VS because of better LSP, but built-in LSP support is coming in the next Emacs. Good. Because once I went back to 'standard' keyboard commands, I never felt comfortable. It just doesn't feel right. Also Emacs is so vastly more capable in some ways it just blows VS away. In other ways VS is better certainly, in the more advanced technical stuff such as LSP, in other ways, screw it. So: grab a book, prepared to put in a bit of time, good luck! (Edit: just remembered, I certainly did buy the book but started off doing the built-in Emacs tutorial before that)
  - schemescape 3y ago
    That's a very thoughtful response, thanks. It would be nice if I could see into the future to know whether or not my time spent learning Emacs will pay off :)
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      Good luck with your decision, whichever it is! My only suggestion is avoid Gnus which I found an incredibly flaky mess and regretted ever touching it.
brokenkebaby 3y ago
The fact that Emacsen developers started to create text-manipulation terminology earlier is laudable. But it doesn't make Emacsen terms better. From purely pragmatic perspective we have almost a separate language which brings additional barrier for entry, while adding no particular value. I really feel like we stick to sunk-cost fallacy here.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  I fear I may be wasting my time replying, but I'm going to try and understand where you're coming from rather than answer your question about Emacs. Your complaint comes across very much like moaning that strawberries are not the same as cherries. Quite true, and that is exactly why it's a good thing; I would prefer to have a world with strawberries and cherries. Emacs is different from (e.g.) Visual Studio and that's a good thing. Your complaint seems to be that you want Emacs to resemble something else, okay, and after the terminology matches do you want the key bindings to match as well,? And then what do you want? How close in the end, do you want them to look and behave? And if you want them very close, then just use what you're familiar with already and don't worry about us Emacs users. ISTM you are trying to turn Emacs into visual studio, if not then please make it clear what precisely you want other than injecting phrases like "barrier to entry". Please be specific. The biggest barrier to entry for you is yourself; the fact that you're not prepared to try something different. So please tell me, what exactly do you want Emacs to end up looking like, if not a clone of Visual Studio?
  - brokenkebaby 3y ago
    I'm not sure if your answer is for my comment, or you posted it to the wrong thread. If it's the former, could you clarify what part of my comment you answering?
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      You're talking about terminology being a barrier to entry. Terminology is trivial but suppose we changed it (yank -> paste, kill -> cut etc). Now you'll not be happy with the key bindings (C-y to paste, C-k to cut) and want them to be replaced with the Windows/Mac standard – right? Because developing new muscle-memory for a different style of working is a lot heavier than just learning new terms for existing things. Having done that you'll want all the other key bindings changed surely? And I can see it progressing from their – Emacs regular expressions don't behave quite like visual studio IIRC, for example. Search and replace is pretty weird if you're not used to it. Rectangular selection is very different in Emacs from visual studio. etc. If you change Emacs you lose a lot of what makes it Emacs, and good. So if I'm not misrepresenting you, and apologies if I am, I don't see your demands for change stopping until Emacs resembles, perhaps, visual studio, in which case why not just use visual studio? I hope that makes sense.