[ESS] Care to critique some Emacs-ess slides?

[Sven Hartenstein]

Paul,

I enjoyed reading your slides. The passion with regard to Emacs would
probably increase my motivation to look at it, if I wasn't already.
Then, I guess, if I was a student of yours, I'd probably get very
curious about all those keyboard shortcuts that you so hardly want me
to ignore, probably I would have a look at the manual and learn
shortcuts, which would then make my life easier. Even if you did not
intend this, I like it. :-) In other words: I imagine your slides
actually being inspiring to both mouse and keyboard fans.

> If you were learning Emacs today, would you really try to memorize
> keyboard navigation keys?

Definitely! I admit that during the first months or years of emacs
usage, I thought C-n and C-p to be a bit silly since we have arrow
keys. But now I find it so much easier and faster so not move my hand
to the arrow keys. I use C-n, C-p, C-a, C-e, C-f, M-f, C-b, M-b and
more all the time.

(I am in the progress of changing file manager from mc to doublecmd;
what I am most missing in doublecmd is C-n and C-p to move to
next/previous file!)

Sven


Am 23.08.2012 01:22, schrieb Paul Johnson:
> I told the students they have to use Emacs, and decided to write up
> slides for that.
>
> http://pj.freefaculty.org/guides/Rcourse/emacs-ess/emacs-ess.pdf
>
> Title "Emacs Has No Learning Curve."
>
> I argue against the general option, which seems to be that Emacs is
> too difficult and we all need to use RStudio or other IDEs that are
> designed to run on cell phones.
>
> I think the Emacs tutorial and most Emacs help sheets are causing a
> problem.  They try to teach people how to use Emacs without a mouse or
> arrow keys or page down keys. At the current time, It is simply not
> necessary for many users to remember how to change the active buffer
> with a keyboard.  The mouse&  menu approach is good enough for most
> people almost all the time.  If we put a few properly chosen settings
> in .emacs, Emacs can be just about as convenient as any other editor
> in the modern desktop world, and it is many times more powerful.
>
> I wonder if this theme is bothersome to you?  If you were learning
> Emacs today, would you really try to memorize keyboard navigation
> keys?  Ex: C-v to go to the "next screen" (that's the first thing in
> Emacs tutorial). I don't think somebody who finished high school after
> 1990 has even the slightest idea of what "screen" means in a terminal
> context. Just hit "page down" and forget about it!
>
> If you have ideas for more ESS highlights, please let me know. I think
> the C-c C-d and C-c C-l trick is the neatest feature ever.  But most
> of the other ESS stuff is pretty obvious from the GUI layout. I did
> not write anything about using gdb with C functions inside R packages.
> If I ever master that, I suppose I'll have to write another slideshow.
>
> pj
>