Paul,

I like these notes a lot.

Just a few technical comments.

on page 5, I suggest staying OS-agnostic and spell Windows with the "ws"
ending.

In the list of languages on page 9, add 'English', and conclude with '...'
English is handled by text-mode.  text-mode is the default for .txt and
.text files.
You might want to mention that emacs works with unicode and therefore all
human-
readable languages.

page 46-47, I think ediff is worth the price of admission.  I recommend a
screen shot.
The figure 4 in our paper
http://amstat.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/1061860042985
shows an example screenshot.  The journal download is free for American
Statistical Association members.
An early version of that paper is included in the ESS distribution
(downloaded directly from
ess.r-project.org) as file ess/doc/ess-intro-graphs.pdf, and the screen
shot is Figure 1.

page 61.  I have a philosophical disagreement with your recommendation of
C-c d and C-c l.
That combination is incompatible with the preference of ESS-core for the
model that the source code
in the .R file is real.  See page 32 (Section 3.4) of ess/doc/ess.pdf for
discussion of this point.

Rich

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Sven Hartenstein <lists@svenhartenstein.de
> wrote:

> 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<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
>>
>>
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