the Modernization of Emacs
in [Lisp]
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From: Hadron Quark on 27 Apr 2006 08:12 Galen Boyer <galen_boyer(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, hadronquark(a)gmail.com wrote: > >> You seem to confuse user friendliness with reduced functionality : >> this is only the case when "stupid" people implement the user >> friendliness. > > So, is your point that the Emacs developers are stupid people? > > -- > Galen Boyer Most certainly not : I seem to recall that it was you accusing people who wanted an app to be user friendly as "stupid". My last line was taking a swipe at your inability to accept that things can be highly functional and user friendly - and this is even without taking emacs into account. I disagree strongly with your assertion that "user friendly apps are for stupid people". Emacs doesnt strive for user friendliness : is strives for power. Most things it does are for a reason - my point is that its not necessrily "obvious" how to best use it - even for "non stupid" people.
From: rydis on 27 Apr 2006 15:58 Hadron Quark <hadronquark(a)gmail.com> writes: > "Greg"posted on 2006-04-25: > > Just copy your .emacs file to a usb thumb drive and you're done, even on > > a Windows machine. Try and save your Windows app configuration in > >some > > Do you have any idea how wrong you are on this? Different emacs apps > install in different emacs places. They require changes to different > emacs config files. often newer versions require adding extra lines to > start.site.el, or addition of 50xxxx.el files in site-start.d. Often > they are not compatible with Xemacs but are with 22.04 etc etc > etc. Its is a myth that just copying your .emacs saves your > configuration and install base. That's the extremely convoluted Debian setup, it seems. It's weird and scary, and tends to break or behave badly in odd ways. Building Emacs from scratch and maintaining your site-lisp directories manually is a /whole/ lot easier, especially since Debian collects the sources to a whole lot of packages, so you don't need to hunt them down yourself. (I'm not an expert Emacs nor Debian admin, but I've used them both for 10+ years, and maintained an Emacs installation for a couple of hundred users for a number of years. The Debian Emacs setup on my single-user box is a whole lot more convoluted than what we used for 4 OS's on 3 hardware platforms.) ',mr -- [Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. -- Neal Stephenson, _In the Beginning was the Command Line_
From: Galen Boyer on 27 Apr 2006 18:47 On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, hadronquark(a)gmail.com wrote: > Galen Boyer <galen_boyer(a)yahoo.com> writes: > >> On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, hadronquark(a)gmail.com wrote: >> >>> You seem to confuse user friendliness with reduced functionality : >>> this is only the case when "stupid" people implement the user >>> friendliness. >> >> So, is your point that the Emacs developers are stupid people? >> >> -- >> Galen Boyer > > Most certainly not : I seem to recall that it was you accusing people > who wanted an app to be user friendly as "stupid". You are completely mistaken. > My last line was taking a swipe at your inability to accept that > things can be highly functional and user friendly - and this is even > without taking emacs into account. When did I ever say that the two things were mutually exclusive? > I disagree strongly with your assertion that "user friendly apps > are for stupid people". When did I say this? > Emacs doesnt strive for user friendliness : is strives for power. I would disagree. It strives for a "perfect" experience, which is a blend of both. > Most things it does are for a reason - my point is that its not > necessrily "obvious" how to best use it - even for "non stupid" > people. Yes, this is true. -- Galen Boyer
From: Hadron Quark on 28 Apr 2006 03:20 Galen Boyer <galen_boyer(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, hadronquark(a)gmail.com wrote: >> Galen Boyer <galen_boyer(a)yahoo.com> writes: >> >>> On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, hadronquark(a)gmail.com wrote: >>> >>>> You seem to confuse user friendliness with reduced functionality : >>>> this is only the case when "stupid" people implement the user >>>> friendliness. >>> >>> So, is your point that the Emacs developers are stupid people? >>> >>> -- >>> Galen Boyer >> >> Most certainly not : I seem to recall that it was you accusing people >> who wanted an app to be user friendly as "stupid". > > You are completely mistaken. > >> My last line was taking a swipe at your inability to accept that >> things can be highly functional and user friendly - and this is even >> without taking emacs into account. > > When did I ever say that the two things were mutually exclusive? > My news server wont restore to past thread : if I am mistaken then I apologise. > > I would disagree. It strives for a "perfect" experience, which is a > blend of both. Since perfection is different for different people then I would disagree here. It strives for power : and gives the ability to customise through groups and lisp. > >> Most things it does are for a reason - my point is that its not >> necessrily "obvious" how to best use it - even for "non stupid" >> people. > > Yes, this is true. > > -- > Galen Boyer -- lithp : syntax error
From: Hadron Quark on 28 Apr 2006 03:47
rydis (Martin Rydstr|m) @CD.Chalmers.SE writes: > Hadron Quark <hadronquark(a)gmail.com> writes: >> "Greg"posted on 2006-04-25: >> > Just copy your .emacs file to a usb thumb drive and you're done, even on >> > a Windows machine. Try and save your Windows app configuration in >> >some >> >> Do you have any idea how wrong you are on this? Different emacs apps >> install in different emacs places. They require changes to different >> emacs config files. often newer versions require adding extra lines to >> start.site.el, or addition of 50xxxx.el files in site-start.d. Often >> they are not compatible with Xemacs but are with 22.04 etc etc >> etc. Its is a myth that just copying your .emacs saves your >> configuration and install base. > > That's the extremely convoluted Debian setup, it seems. It's weird and > scary, and tends to break or behave badly in odd ways. Building Emacs I'm relieved to hear someone saying that. I thought I was going nuts for a minute : especially with an emacs admin of 15 years telling me how obvious it all was and how he configures multi-user emacs installations without having a single problem because of how simple debian makes it. Frankly I think the debian directory setup for emacs is understandable, but far from trivial. |