The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

[Bjorn Borud]

[Twisted <twisted0n3 at gmail.com>]
| You end up having to memorize the help, because *you can't
| have arbitrary parts of the help and your document open side by side
| and be working on the document*. All because you can't simply tab or
| click to the document.

yes you can.  you even have a lot of choice as to how you want to do
it and it even works on the simplest of text terminals (which is
useful when you are on the road and only have a computer with a
browser availabe and you've had the foresight to set up the Mindterm
SSH applet on a machine so you can log in and edit code from anywhere
in the world).

I use multiple frames on-screen most of the time.  either to edit and
view multiple files at once or to edit different locations of the same
file.  if you're a programmer it is often useful to be able to do
this.  you can look at more than one file at the same time, have
documentation up on screen etc.

| At minimum, you have to *memorize* some arcane key controls for
| switching panes ... er, "windows", that are totally unintuitive and
| unlike what is normally used.

following the built-in tutorial in Emacs I understood how to
manipulate buffers and split windows in various ways.  there are
basically three commands you need to know.  one of them is used to
switch between active buffers in a given window, so it is not specific
to splitting.

it took me minutes to learn and within days I didn't even think about
what I was doing -- I was just using the features.

I think you fail to understand the approach.  if you know an editor
like VI or Emacs properly you have a much bigger bag of tricks, that
are applicable to a wide range of scenarios, than what is encouraged
by GUI intensive editors.  and you don't think of them as "tricks".
it is just the way you edit text.

| Oops. The interface design is a nightmare. The most basic requirement,
| that it be easy to have the help open side by side with your document
| and switch back and forth and navigate inside the help easily, is
| broken. If you have to consult the help just to navigate the help or
| to switch focus between document and help, then you're trapped, and
| that is what happens with emacs.

why don't you learn Emacs before you say what it can and can't do?
it is so frustrating to debate editors with people who haven't even
bothered to make a minimal effort to at least spend a day or two
learning it.

let's look at Word and word processing.  how long does it take you to
learn Word properly?  to understand how to efficiently edit large
documents, automate common tasks, use the built-in features for
helping you organize documents?


-Bjørn