Global indent

[Steven D'Aprano]

Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> Rob Gaddi <rgaddi at technologyhighland.invalid>:
> 
>> Emacs and vim both have huge learning curves
> 
> Really now?
> 
> When you start emacs, it advises you to start the builtin tutorial.

You need a tutorial for a text editor???

If that's supposed to prove how easy Emacs is, you have failed miserably.
Any application which requires a tutorial should consider it a UI failure.
Ideally applications should be "intuitive" in the sense that all features
should be self-explanatory, obvious, and easily discovered. Of course, the
more complex the application, the less this is likely to be true, but every
feature that requires explanation is a feature that is begging for
improvement.


> That's how I learned it in the 1980's and didn't experience any learning
> curve.

No learning curve at all? That means one of two things:

- either you *instantly* intuited every single Emacs feature the moment you
started the application; or

- Emacs has no features at all.

I'm pretty sure neither of those is the case :-)


> Nowadays, emacs has a GUI that makes you productive immediately without
> any keyboard commands. I have seen complete newbies adopt emacs without
> any kind of duress or hardship.

I just started up emacs, and got a GUI window with an abstract picture of a
gnu and a bunch of instructions which I didn't get a chance to read. I
clicked on the text, and the instructions disappeared. I don't know how to
get them back. They were replaced with what looks like a blank page ready
to type into, except it starts with this ominous warning:

;; This buffer is for notes you don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.
;; If you want to create a file, visit that file with C-x C-f,
;; then enter the text in that file's own buffer.

Why would I be writing notes I don't want to save? If I did, wouldn't I, you
know, just *not save them* instead of write them in a special buffer
(whatever that is!)?

Lisp evaluation? I don't have any speech impediments, thank you very much.

Okay, so let's try creating a file, using those instructions. I dutifully
type C-x C-f and, apart from "C-x C-f" appearing on the screen, nothing
happens. I wait a while in case it's just slow.

Ah, silly me, I need to *enter* the command to make it happen. So I press
Enter. Nothing happens except the cursor moves down a line.

Perhaps Emacs has frozen? The blinking cursor is still blinking, so that's
unlikely.

Okay, let's click the blank page icon, the universal symbol for creating a
new, blank document. That at least is recognisable.

Well, that's just bizarre. I expected a new document. Instead, I got a
message in the status bar at the bottom of the page, saying:

Find file: /home/steve/

and the blinking cursor. I don't want to find a file, and if I did I would
use my computer's Find or Search application, not a text editor. So still
no new document I can type into.

When all else fails, use the menus. So I try the File menu. It's a bit
disconcerting that, alone of all the applications I've used on eight
different platforms (Windows 95, 98, XP, Classic Mac, Mac OS X, Linux with
Gnome, KDE and Xfce window managers), the mouse pointer points the other
way when over a menu, but hey, I'm a sophisticated user and I refuse to be
put off by such a minor, albeit gratuitous, difference. But there is no New
Document command, and I am stymied again.

I shall not be defeated by a mere text editor. I click the New Document icon
again, hoping that what failed last time will succeed this time. But at
least I am not entirely insane, for although I did not get a new document,
at least something different occurred: an error message appeared in the
status bar:

Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer

This is the moment that I decide to give up on Emacs and take up something
trivial in comparison, like being a Soyuz pilot, если вы знаете, что я имею
в виду.



-- 
Steven