The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

[nebulous99 at gmail.com]

On Jun 22, 6:32 pm, Cor Gest <c... at clsnet.nl> wrote:
> > HOW IN THE BLOODY HELL IS IT SUPPOSED TO OCCUR TO SOMEONE TO ENTER
> > THEM, GIVEN THAT THEY HAVE TO DO SO TO REACH THE HELP THAT WOULD TELL
> > THEM THOSE ARE THE KEYS TO REACH THE HELP?!
>
> What's your problem ?
>
> Ofcourse a mere program-consumer would not look what was being
> installed on his/her system in the first place ...
> So after some trivial perusing what was installed and where :
>  WOW Look, MA ! .... it's all there!
>
>                 lpr /usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/etc/refcard.ps
> or your install-dir........^                ^
> or your version.............................^

So now we're expected to go on a filesystem fishing expedition instead
of just hit F1? One small step (backwards) for a man; one giant leap
(backwards) for mankind. :P

> But then again buying the GNU-book from 'O Reilly would have solved it
> in the utmost nicest possible of ways anyway.

So much for the "free" in "free software". If you can't actually use
it without paying money, whether for the software or for some book, it
isn't really free, is it? The book assumes the role of a copy
protection dongle*. Of course, if the book is under the usual sort of
copyright and not copyleft, so much for the "free as in speech" too,
and nevermind the "free as in beer".

* In fact, I not-too-fondly remember the days when a common copy
protection scheme was for software to periodically (or at least on
startup) insist that the user enter the first word on page N of the
manual, for various changing choices of N. Making the interface simply
unnavigable without the manual strikes me as nearly as effective. If
someone did decide to intentionally cripple the interface of some
"free" software and make a killing off a book de-facto required to use
it, it would be quite the racket. I hope the open source movement
would chew them to pieces and curse them in public though.