On Jun 21, 12:03 pm, Robert Uhl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Twisted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >> Emacs is amazingly beginner-friendly for the power and flexibility it > >> provides. [snip] > > > That's a joke, right? I tried it a time or two. Every time it was > > rapidly apparent that doing anything non-trivial would require > > consulting a cheat sheet. The printed-out kind, since navigating to > > the help and back without already having the help displayed and open > > to the command reference was also non-trivial. > > C-h i, C-x b RET is non-trivial?!?
Let's change that so that you see it the way most human beings see it: > > navigating to > > the help and back without already having the help displayed and open > > to the command reference was also non-trivial. > Erh h, dhsd f hHE is non-trivial? I'm sorry. I don't speak Chinese. I trust I've made my point. Not only does it insist you learn a whole other language (though I'm guessing it's not actually Chinese -- Greek, maybe), even when you know that's a bunch of keystrokes and even what they are... HOW IN THE BLOODY HELL IS IT SUPPOSED TO OCCUR TO SOMEONE TO ENTER THEM, GIVEN THAT THEY HAVE TO DO SO TO REACH THE HELP THAT WOULD TELL THEM THOSE ARE THE KEYS TO REACH THE HELP?! I suppose it just pops in there by divine inspiration? Or it's supposed to be self-evident to anyone who has TRUE wisdom? Or maybe it's just expected that you be mentored by an expert, who would know that arcane incantation and could pass it on to a new student. Well I've got news for you buddy -- there's no such thing as divine inspiration, it's not self-evident, and most people can't afford (if they could find) a tutor just to learn how to use A TEXT EDITOR. Of course, Notepad is so easy to use it doesn't even need help, despite which it's readily available. In case you forgot the bog- standard (and therefore it IS self-evident) "F1" there's even a "Help" menu in plain view as soon as you open a Notepad. This is the lowly Notepad, which I'll freely admit is the rusty bicycle of text editors, and it's much easier to use (including the help) than the supposed Mercedes-Benz of editors. [remainder snipped, apparently describing some piece of software that presents you automatically with an emacs tutorial if you start emacs while it's running. I've seen emacs a few times in my day but never whatever unnamed piece of software is being referred to here...but it does occur to me that a context-sensitive auto-popup cheat sheet tool would be useful on the typical unix system!] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
