the Modernization of Emacs
in [Lisp]
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From: David Kastrup on 13 Apr 2006 05:45 Tim X <timx(a)nospam.dev.null> writes: > What do you think of emacs 22 built with GTK rather than the older X > libraries? Is that more what you would consider "modern" or does it > have to be modern in the sense of MS Windows look and feel? > > Personally, I like the simplicity of a basic emacs with toolbars > turned off. Everybody I know turns the toolbars off, including myself. Not for the sake of "simplicity" (that's not really what Emacs is renowned for) but screen estate. I still find it very reasonable to have them on by default, for meeting beginners' needs. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
From: Floyd L. Davidson on 13 Apr 2006 05:55 Tim X <timx(a)nospam.dev.null> wrote: >Benjamin Teuber <beteub(a)web.de> writes: > >> One more thing (although I don't quite agree with the others...): >> >> Would it be so hard to make the emacs windows (besides shell-mode >> which is great as it is) look like any other modern application? I >> know it's just "aesthetic sugar", but to me (x)emacs looks just >> terribly ugly... >> >> Benjamin > >What do you think of emacs 22 built with GTK rather than the older X >libraries? Is that more what you would consider "modern" or does it >have to be modern in the sense of MS Windows look and feel? That is exactly the point. These folks are defining *modern* to be whatever it is they have already learned. Whether it is better implemented, better planned, or better philosophically has nothing to do with their complaint. Which of course makes the complaint useless. >Personally, I like the simplicity of a basic emacs with toolbars >turned off. Which points up the simple fact that "emacs" (in most of its many variations) allows people who want whatever they are comfortable with to have it, even if it is not the *right* way (i.e., best thought out) to use an editor. Adaptions like icon driven toolbars are available. Providing them does *not* interfere with implementing the best possible interface to an editor. That is true of a toolbar even if it is turned on by default (as long as turning it off is easy). On the other hand I would *grossly* disagree with most of the various suggestions for changing default key bindings! That would interfere, and should be avoided. The fact that Microsoft did not spend enough time designing a keyboard interface does *not* mean that any version of emacs should revert to what Microsoft uses, even if it is a more commonly used interface. The emacs interface should *never* be guided by a popularity contest amongst people who are unaware of the differences. It should remain directed at providing the best possible interface, even if it is not easy to learn as a "second language". This is not to say that emacs cannot and will not be improved, but those who complain need to realize that looking at what Microsoft has done is *not* the direction towards improvement. It was *intended* to be different for the mere purpose of being different, not better. -- Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson> Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd(a)apaflo.com
From: John Thingstad on 13 Apr 2006 06:21 On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 11:55:08 +0200, Floyd L. Davidson <floyd(a)apaflo.com> wrote: > On the other hand I would *grossly* disagree with most of the > various suggestions for changing default key bindings! That > would interfere, and should be avoided. The fact that Microsoft > did not spend enough time designing a keyboard interface does > *not* mean that any version of emacs should revert to what > Microsoft uses, even if it is a more commonly used interface. > The microsoft key inteface is part of the Common User Access Document (CUA). It was developed by IBM, not Microsoft. And they did spend the best part of two years carefully thinking it out. That noone ever did this for X-Windows, now that is obvious. With upteent window managers and people typically using software written for several you never know what you are going to get. Every program on it's own in a sense defeats the point of a integrated inteface. > The emacs interface should *never* be guided by a popularity > contest amongst people who are unaware of the differences. It > should remain directed at providing the best possible interface, > even if it is not easy to learn as a "second language". > People will have a easier time learning to use it if things work as the expect. Arrow keys, home, end etc.. It is visually intuetive to see what these keys do. If they have to look up basic commands like moving a cursor that alone would turn many away from the program. > This is not to say that emacs cannot and will not be improved, > but those who complain need to realize that looking at what > Microsoft has done is *not* the direction towards improvement. > It was *intended* to be different for the mere purpose of being > different, not better. > Being different for it's own sake was never the point of Emacs. It simply existed long before Windows or even X-Windows. That Mac and Window's users have come to expect certain operations to work is reasonable and indeed Emacs has come a long way in accomodating them. I think they deserve praise for that. -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
From: David Kastrup on 13 Apr 2006 06:23 "John Thingstad" <john.thingstad(a)chello.no> writes: > The microsoft key inteface is part of the Common User Access > Document (CUA). It was developed by IBM, not Microsoft. And they > did spend the best part of two years carefully thinking it out. That > noone ever did this for X-Windows, now that is obvious. Come off it. The X Window system is a network transparent hardware interface, not a GUI. So it can hardly be blamed to not have any default keybindings. That's not its job. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
From: Alan Mackenzie on 13 Apr 2006 03:58
David Kastrup <dak(a)gnu.org> wrote on Wed, 12 Apr 2006 11:01:01 +0200: > "Tim Bradshaw" <tfb+google(a)tfeb.org> writes: >> David Kastrup wrote: >>> XEmacs is not Emacs. >> Um, yes, it is. > It is a fork, so you can't blame the Emacs developers for the > deficiencies in XEmacs. Enabling font-lock by default in a version > that is clearly not fit for general use is not something that happened > in Emacs. When Emacs development made the decision to enable it by > default in future versions, _months_ of work were invested until the > state was deemed tolerable. And XEmacs has an even earlier version of > font-lock. > So for the purpose of complaining about unusable defaults, you simply > can't blame the Emacs developers, and it is extremely unfair to > chastize Emacs over several postings and then mention in passing that > you are actually talking about XEmacs, a completely different project. "Emacs" does not always, or even usually, mean specifically "GNU Emacs" and this newsgroup, comp.emacs, is intended for discussion of _all_ Emacs editors. >> I used font lock on Xemacs on sub-100-MHz (probably sub 50MHz) >> machines just fine, and before FSF Emacs *had* fonts (well, >> technically I used it on lemacs of course). > That's probably some entirely different code. Anyway, the problem > with the XEmacs font lock code is that it does _not_ work "just fine" > in all cases, merely in most. The font locking in GNU Emacs also works "just fine" only in most cases. As you will recall, there have been heated debates on emacs-devel in the last few weeks about how best to fix some of the remaining problems. > Whether this has been different at some previous time, no idea. But at > the current point of time, XEmacs font-lock is trailing behind the > Emacs code considerably. "Considerably"? I don't know about that. It works just fine most of the time. > David Kastrup -- Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany) Email: aacm(a)muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter (like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a"). |