["Followup-To:" header set to comp.emacs.] > If you'd spent half an hour using the tutorial (helpfully displayed > right there when you start emacs), you could have saved three and a half > hours of wasted time. And you'd now be using an actual text editor, > which is often helpful.
Your statement is obviously based on your assumption everyone has as good a memory as you. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. I came to emacs as a geezer with a less than sterling short term memory. I got about 8 keystrokes into the tutorial before I was lost. I finally had to start a cheat sheet. It's also a PIA to read a tutorial and practice in another window until you know how to open/close/juggle said windows. I never did get much from emacs' tutorial. It also took me awhile to train my pinkies to reach for that until-now-unused Ctrl key. No, using emacs is not trivial. It's a learned skill that requires some effort. More for some than others. In emacs', defense, it's a helluva lot more intuitive than vi, which is a nightmare straight from Hell! nb -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
