[rescue] emacs vs. Word!, was Re: SUN PCMCIA SBus Card

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, 28 May 2018 at 15:50, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:

>    Well there you get into the trap of removing or changing functionality
> to conform to the menu system.  I think that's backwards.  You may
disagree.

There is one model used by every extant editor on every OS, including
*every* Unix graphical text editor.

And 2 ancient Unix editors that do something else.

I don't buy that the way they do it is so much better. I have examined the
evidence in detail, over years, and I am unconvinced.

>    I know you don't care.  I do.  That's why you're not an emacs user,
> and I am.  You'll find that removing functionality to make one program
> look and act like some other one isn't an idea that many developers (or
> users) will embrace.

I'm not asking you to lose or remove anything at all. I'm asking for an
extra mode to allow users of *every other editor on the planet* to use the
one you say is the best.

Is that so hard?

>    This isn't a homogeneity thing.  It's not an ease-of-learning thing.
> It's a functionality and power thing.  The fact that a lot of editors
> have copied each other's UI isn't really relevant here at all.  Once
> again, not for simpletons.  You say you're not a simpleton, and having
> occasionally read your work I would agree.  But you use your tools like
one.

I really don't, but you are so convinced that your way is the right way
that you won't even entertain the idea that others' ways work better for
them.

>    As for me, I don't need my workflows provided to me by someone who
> thinks he/she knows what is the best way for me to work.  I've been
> using both emacs and vi regularly since the mid-1980s and I want for
> nothing in text manipulation.

Like I said. I don't want to take anything from old hands. I want something
that helps newbies migrate.

Would it impact the functionality of Emacs in any way if it called document
windows "windows" and not buffers?

I don't think so.

Would it hurt if it called the "alt" key Alt, like it says on every keycap
since the PC AT, and not "meta", which no keyboard made since about 1975
says?

I don't think so.

Do you?

>   Monocultures often suck.

Is a standard UI a monoculture? All Unix shells are very alike. ``ls''
works much the same everywhere. Is that a good or bad thing?

>    ROFL!  Having extricated myself from the classiccmp mailing list, I'd
> forgotten that about you.  The psychology world have a name for your
> type of personality, the guy who hates everything and complains about
> everything, but I don't know what the name is offhand.

Not at all. There are tons of things in IT that I really like.

I like my Mac. I like Ubuntu. I now work for SUSE and I quite like
openSUSE. YAST is a wonderful tool and no other Linux has anything like it.

I loved BeOS and classic MacOS and Acorn RISC OS and EPOC on my Psions. I
adore my Newtons even thought I never really used them in anger.

I liked OS/2 before Win95 came along. I liked Windows for a long time until
Linux caught up and passed it. I was an early adopter of Windows and used
2.0 extensively years before the Windows 3 boom in popularity.

> > https://os.ghalkes.nl/tilde/

>    ...hey, that looks pretty nice!

It really is.

>    Well, things don't really work that way in the real world.  The proof
> is in emacs.  It's doing just fine, implementation after implementation.
>   The most common implementation, GNU emacs, has been around for 30+
> years and is doing just fine.  It's not going to "die" just for your
> gratification.

You're putting words in my mouth I never said. That's not OK.

I said I wanted it to thrive and succeed. Didn't you see that bit?

--
Liam Proven b" Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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