7 ms·

It seems like a list of nice, but most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks (cua-mode) Well this will have the greybeards frothing at the mouth :)

by geokon 3y ago

It seems like a list of nice, but most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks (cua-mode) Well this will have the greybeards frothing at the mouth :) that said, `cua-mode` is kinda terrible/half-assed b/c it implements a tiny fraction of what I think most people would consider "CUA". If you want a real CUA-mode use `ergoemacs`. Then Emacs will start to behave like every other GUI since the last mass extinction. It comes with a nice illustration of all the keybindings which leads to good discoverability of features. The only downside I saw was it had really slow launch times. Once you're comfortable with ELisp you can just rolled your own keybindings though Is there some reason ergoemacs has never caught on?

ashton314 3y ago
> most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks "That's just like uh… your opinion man." —"The Big Lebowski", I think ;-) I'm mostly of the opinion that vanilla Emacs has some bad opinions with regards to discoverability and ease-of-use-for-newbies, which is what this starter kit is targeting. CUA-mode is on because without it you're gonna have newbies footgunning themselves super hard right out the gate, and that's the biggest thing I want to avoid. If you consider this setup opinionated, then great—I'll embrace that. :) I think they're the kind of opinions that help newbies. > ergoemacs Are you referring to Xah Lee's stuff? Or something else? I'd love to see what you're referring to—please send me a link here or on my contact page. That said, Xah himself said at one point that `cua-mode` should be on by default,[1] so I think it's good enough for this kit. [1]: http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization.html http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization.html
- geokon 3y ago
  yeah Xah Lee's ergoemacs. You should give it a try. I don't think we disagree. cua-mode is better than nothing.. but just enabling CUA feels kinda lazy bc it's easily improved from Xah Lee himself： http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization_cua-mode.html http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization_cua-mode.html
  - ashton314 3y ago
    Ah, ok. Thanks for the link—I'll take a look at this and see if I can make it better. Thank you again!
- lproven 3y ago
  > I'd love to see what you're referring to There is Google, you know. https://ergoemacs.github.io/ https://ergoemacs.github.io/ It's the biggest thing to happen to Emacs in 30 years. That is presumably why all the beardies ignore it. I used to know 20-30 totally different editors. That all went away circa 1990 when the CUA UI swept the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access All late-era DOS stuff, and Windows >= 3.x, Mac OS X and ~all Linux GUIs are compliant. I refuse to learn any other editor UI. Life is too short. Comply with CUA, or die in a fire.
  - lycopodiopsida 3y ago
    >It's the biggest thing to happen to Emacs in 30 years. That is presumably why all the beardies ignore it. Clearly bearing the costs of a wrong decision - learn vim keybindings 30 years ago, and use it in every popular editor and ide, including emacs, ever since. Only half-joking.
    - lproven 3y ago
      :-) That's sort of the point. I learned all those editors (VMS EDT and RPED and LocoScript and Edlin and WordStar and WordPerfect and DisplayWrite and MultiMate and loads of BASIC editors, including the very strange RISC OS one, with two independent cursors) before I ever saw Vi for the first time, which was on SCO Xenix in about 1989 or so. Vi was just another weird editor to me, a supercharged Edlin and you'd have to be mad to love Edlin. So I learned the bare rudiments and moved on. Then a wave of standardisation happened across the industry, and I surfed it and it was great. Suddenly all mainstream editors used the same UI and it was so much easier. Then [record scratch, fast forward] in 2014 I got a job in a Linux vendor and discovered all these rabid Vim enthusiasts in the 21st century. I was amazed. Later I got a job in a _different_ Linux vendor, where we had a significant presences of Emacs fans. I never thought I'd meet keen Vi(m) users who weren't born yet when MS-DOS 5 got a full screen editor. I thought all that nastiness had gone away. So, yes, there are these 2 camps who learned one set of UI, way back when, and love it: Vi users and Emacs users. I am not saying either is wrong. But there is another camp that doesn't know it's a camp: the millions of unknowing CUA users. Emacs is meant to be the ultimate in configurability. Well configure it to look like an editor from the 1990s instead of the 1970s, and I'll try it. But I'm not learning another new 1970s editor now, after 40 years of this stuff. Hard no. I am not a programmer. I don't care how good it is for programmers. I write human language. I need an editor for that: Markdown, these days, mainly.
Name_Chawps 3y ago
When creating a starter kit, one must choose defaults. Choosing the default emacs defaults is still a choice. What is the simpler choice? Choosing the defaults that are built-in already, or the defaults new users will expect?
hyperman1 3y ago
Thanks for the ergoemacs hint. I was looking for a linux notepad++ replacement, and kate notepadqq vscode nano all have downsides. While I used to like xemacs back in the day, neither emacs nor vim really clicked, the basics are just to alien. This brings emacs back to the list of usable options.

by geokon 3y ago

ashton314 3y ago

> most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks "That's just like uh… your opinion man." —"The Big Lebowski", I think ;-) I'm mostly of the opinion that vanilla Emacs has some bad opinions with regards to discoverability and ease-of-use-for-newbies, which is what this starter kit is targeting. CUA-mode is on because without it you're gonna have newbies footgunning themselves super hard right out the gate, and that's the biggest thing I want to avoid. If you consider this setup opinionated, then great—I'll embrace that. :) I think they're the kind of opinions that help newbies. > ergoemacs Are you referring to Xah Lee's stuff? Or something else? I'd love to see what you're referring to—please send me a link here or on my contact page. That said, Xah himself said at one point that `cua-mode` should be on by default,[1] so I think it's good enough for this kit. [1]: http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization.html http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization.html

geokon 3y ago
yeah Xah Lee's ergoemacs. You should give it a try. I don't think we disagree. cua-mode is better than nothing.. but just enabling CUA feels kinda lazy bc it's easily improved from Xah Lee himself： http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization_cua-mode.html http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization_cua-mode.html
- ashton314 3y ago
  Ah, ok. Thanks for the link—I'll take a look at this and see if I can make it better. Thank you again!
lproven 3y ago
> I'd love to see what you're referring to There is Google, you know. https://ergoemacs.github.io/ https://ergoemacs.github.io/ It's the biggest thing to happen to Emacs in 30 years. That is presumably why all the beardies ignore it. I used to know 20-30 totally different editors. That all went away circa 1990 when the CUA UI swept the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access All late-era DOS stuff, and Windows >= 3.x, Mac OS X and ~all Linux GUIs are compliant. I refuse to learn any other editor UI. Life is too short. Comply with CUA, or die in a fire.
- lycopodiopsida 3y ago
  >It's the biggest thing to happen to Emacs in 30 years. That is presumably why all the beardies ignore it. Clearly bearing the costs of a wrong decision - learn vim keybindings 30 years ago, and use it in every popular editor and ide, including emacs, ever since. Only half-joking.
  - lproven 3y ago
    :-) That's sort of the point. I learned all those editors (VMS EDT and RPED and LocoScript and Edlin and WordStar and WordPerfect and DisplayWrite and MultiMate and loads of BASIC editors, including the very strange RISC OS one, with two independent cursors) before I ever saw Vi for the first time, which was on SCO Xenix in about 1989 or so. Vi was just another weird editor to me, a supercharged Edlin and you'd have to be mad to love Edlin. So I learned the bare rudiments and moved on. Then a wave of standardisation happened across the industry, and I surfed it and it was great. Suddenly all mainstream editors used the same UI and it was so much easier. Then [record scratch, fast forward] in 2014 I got a job in a Linux vendor and discovered all these rabid Vim enthusiasts in the 21st century. I was amazed. Later I got a job in a _different_ Linux vendor, where we had a significant presences of Emacs fans. I never thought I'd meet keen Vi(m) users who weren't born yet when MS-DOS 5 got a full screen editor. I thought all that nastiness had gone away. So, yes, there are these 2 camps who learned one set of UI, way back when, and love it: Vi users and Emacs users. I am not saying either is wrong. But there is another camp that doesn't know it's a camp: the millions of unknowing CUA users. Emacs is meant to be the ultimate in configurability. Well configure it to look like an editor from the 1990s instead of the 1970s, and I'll try it. But I'm not learning another new 1970s editor now, after 40 years of this stuff. Hard no. I am not a programmer. I don't care how good it is for programmers. I write human language. I need an editor for that: Markdown, these days, mainly.

Name_Chawps 3y ago

When creating a starter kit, one must choose defaults. Choosing the default emacs defaults is still a choice. What is the simpler choice? Choosing the defaults that are built-in already, or the defaults new users will expect?

hyperman1 3y ago

Thanks for the ergoemacs hint. I was looking for a linux notepad++ replacement, and kate notepadqq vscode nano all have downsides. While I used to like xemacs back in the day, neither emacs nor vim really clicked, the basics are just to alien. This brings emacs back to the list of usable options.