On Jun 23, 8:35 pm, Robert Uhl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Twisted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > For an example of the latter, consider opening a file. Can't remember > > the exact spelling and capitalization of the file name? Sorry, bud, > > you're SOL. Go find it in some other app and memorize the name, then > > return to emacs. > > Once again I am forced to wonder if you have _ever_ actually used > emacs. find-file has tab completion: hit tab without anything typed, and > it displays _everything_ in the directory; type a few characters to > narrow it down; hit tab to complete the filename and be done with it. > > Or of course you could use directory mode, which enables you to navigate > around a directory tree, performing actions on files (including editing > them). > > Then of course there's ido.el, which is even better: type a few > characters from anywhere in the name, and it displays files matching > those characters.
Really? None of this happens if you just do the straightforward file- open command, which should obviously at least provide a navigable directory tree, but definitely does not. One sounds like it involves managing a separate open window on each directory you're interested in (versus having a file...open dialog that falls open to the last place you'd left it and doesn't clutter up any space when you're not opening a file); the other sounds like it involves actually installing a plugin of some kind, which is obviously well beyond what a beginner should need to do just to get a freaking directory listing. :) Tab completion is a poor cousin to a real directory tree navigator, as I'm sure most would agree. Even if it will show all matches to a partial name instead of none, it's the textual equivalent of navigating a directory tree made into menus instead of provided by a proper folder view window. Windows users unfortunately have the experience regularly: the notorious Start menu. You have to expand submenus to find stuff, and you can't leave it idling to do something somewhere else and come back to it because it's a menu. Moreover, clicking an item may display a large number of items the next level down, which runs into screen display space issues. Even a large video mode can't hide the fact that menus weren't really designed to list hundreds of sibling items or for scrolling or finding stuff in a large set of files, unlike folder windows. I can only imagine the pain of trying to navigate an equivalent way in an 80x25 box of text information. That would be like navigating the Windows start menu from outside your house by peeking through a keyhole and reaching through a window with a repurposed straightened out coathanger. Clumsy AND the neighbors'll see you and call the cops well before you find the item you're looking for. :) (Navigating the Windows start menu in safe mode, at 640x480, is about as close as most Windows users are ever likely to come to the nightmare of opening a file in emacs when you don't already know its exact path.) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
