What does 'run' do in cperl-mode?
formido
print "Hello World\n";
... in the buffer and it's saved. I can use the debugger command to
run it. Strangely to me, 'run' is disabled. What does 'run' do? In
other IDEs I've used, I type some code, then I either compile or don't
depending on the language, and then I run. What's different here?
More generally, when confronted by a menu command, how can I easily go
to its definition?
formido
And I found the answer to the first question, buried in cperl's page
at emacswiki: Apparently you have to install something called Mode
Compile.
Xah
>
> print "Hello World\n";
>
> ... in the buffer and it's saved. I can use the debugger command to
> run it. Strangely to me, 'run' is disabled. What does 'run' do? In
> other IDEs I've used, I type some code, then I either compile or don't
> depending on the language, and then I run. What's different here?
I don't know. But you can run it by typing Alt+x shell-command
(shortcut Alt+x !) then type “perl ‹filename›”.
Or, you can write a short elisp so that pressing a key will run the
program in current buffer.
(defun run-current-file ()
"Execute or compile the current file.
For example, if the current buffer is the file x.pl,
then it'll call “perl x.pl” in a shell.
The file can be php, perl, python, bash, java.
File suffix is used to determine what program to run."
(interactive)
(let (ext-map file-name file-ext prog-name cmd-str)
; get the file name
; get the program name
; run it
(setq ext-map
'(
("php" . "php")
("pl" . "perl")
("py" . "python")
("sh" . "bash")
("java" . "javac")
)
)
(setq file-name (buffer-file-name))
(setq file-ext (file-name-extension file-name))
(setq prog-name (cdr (assoc file-ext ext-map)))
(setq cmd-str (concat prog-name " " file-name))
(shell-command cmd-str)))
(global-set-key (kbd "<f7>") 'run-current-file)
for detail, see:
http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_run_current_file.html
> More generally, when confronted by a menu command, how can I easily go
> to its definition?
Type Alt+x describe-key, then pull the menu. Then, you'll get the
command name run by that menu. Then, type Alt+x describe-function.
It'll pop up the online doc of the function with link to the source
code where the function is defined.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Ted Zlatanov
X> But you can run it by typing Alt+x shell-command (shortcut Alt+x !)
Please note that Alt is not the preferred prefix name for Emacs
purposes. It's Meta, abbreviated M (e.g. M-x), for two reasons:
1) Meta can be mapped to keys other than Alt
2) Meta can be invoked with ESC as well, which is very handy in a
terminal session (I actually use ESC all the time even in a graphical
session)
Ted
Xah
Thanks for the info, i think it's good to know.
Here're some reason i think emacs should adopt the Alt+‹key› or
Alt-‹key› notation throughout its documentation.
• The Alt+‹key› or Alt-‹key› notation is universal among Windows and
Linux. Which accounts for about 95% of personal computers used word
wide. (Apple's computers, which account for about %4 marke share
today, also support the Alt key on their keyboards, and OSX's
documentation also use ‹modifier›-‹key› notation. Aquamacs, perhaps
the most widely used emacs distro on OSX, by default has Alt for Meta
too.) (Note that Microsoft Windows used to use the Alt-‹key› notation.
Only in recent years they changed to the Alt+‹key› notation. Arguably,
this is a good change.)
• The Meta name isn't in some linguistic sense superior that covers
different modifier keys on different OSes. It was one of the modifier
key on obsolete keyboards used by lisp machines in the 1980s.
• By default on all major OSes in use (Windows and Linux and OSX),
emacs maps its Meta to Alt key. So, practically speaking, it works
that way.
• Historically, a “Meta+‹key›” shortcut in emacs can also be invoked
by “Esc ‹key›” or “Ctrl+[”. The design was that way mostly because at
the time, many terminals do not have or support the Meta key, and
Terminal is a primary application in computer use in the 1980s. Today,
perhaps all terminal/console/“command line interface” apps support
Meta as Alt either by default or in a preference setting.
• The ability of pressing Esc for Meta might be still useful for some
people. Users who needed that feature could easily read about it in
emacs doc. (I myself used “esc ‹key›” exclusively during 1998-2004,
mostly because it was a one-brainless solution that works on all
telnet apps regardless of hardware, OS, or setup, and i frequently
need to use different machine, OS, or remote servers. Today, i dont
think i ever press Esc ‹key› for Meta+‹key›)
• A argument from user interface perspective, is that multiple
insignificant options are not good because it increases complexity and
causes the user to sidetrack their focus on tasks. KDE and Gnome,
solved this problem for linuxes by adopting wholesale Microsoft
Window's interface starting about 1998. (before KDE and Gnome, GUI
apps on unix use a variety of “Windows Managers” that has incompatible
User Interfaces.)
For some detail related to the Meta key, see:
“Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful”
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Lennart Borgman (gmail)
> On Jul 25, 9:41 am, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:55:29 -0700 (PDT)Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> X> But you can run it by typing Alt+x shell-command (shortcut Alt+x !)
>>
>> Please note that Alt is not the preferred prefix name for Emacs
>> purposes. It's Meta, abbreviated M (e.g. M-x), for two reasons:
>>
>> 1) Meta can be mapped to keys other than Alt
>>
>> 2) Meta can be invoked with ESC as well, which is very handy in a
>> terminal session (I actually use ESC all the time even in a graphical
>> session)
>>
>> Ted
>
> Thanks for the info, i think it's good to know.
>
> Here're some reason i think emacs should adopt the Alt+‹key› or
> Alt-‹key› notation throughout its documentation.
Why should the documentation call Meta for Alt when it is not Alt? In
for example the patched version of Emacs+EmacsW32 it is possible to use
left and/or right windows keys as Meta. I guess a lot of people do that.
The advantage is that you can use the menus the same way as you are used
to in other w32 programs.
I think it is much better to clearly tell new users the distinction.
They will need to know it at least on w32 from the beginning, cause
otherwise they will get confused by that the menus does not work (if
they use Alt as Meta).
Florian Beck
> • The Meta name isn't in some linguistic sense superior that covers
> different modifier keys on different OSes. It was one of the modifier
> key on obsolete keyboards used by lisp machines in the 1980s.
Actually, Meta is the name X11 gives to one of the modifier keys. Others
are control, alt, super and hyper.
The problem with your suggestion is that while on some keyboards the key
that has ALT written on it is the one meant in Emacs by Meta, calling
Meta Alt in the documentation would be endlessly confusing for people
who make use of X for their keybindings.
--
Florian Beck
Xah
<lennart.borg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why should the documentation call Meta for Alt when it is not Alt? In
> for example the patched version of Emacs+EmacsW32 it is possible to use
> left and/or right windows keys as Meta. I guess a lot of people do that.
Standard and familiarity is important. Going by tech details, each app
will argue about the superiority of their terminology to no ends.
For example, Linux's KDE and Gnome largely adated all Windows's terms.
Left mouse button, right mouse button, instead of some 1st button or
2nd button (which emacs still use). Desktop, instad of various “Window
Managers” or “File managers” (or Directory Editor in older days).
Keyboard shortcut, as apposed to keybinding. File alias or File
shortcut, as opposed to Hard Link, Soft Link. Folders, as opposed to
Directory. File names, as opposed to File ID (older unix term)... etc.
Bottom line is that words and terms change with time, in computing as
well in science. Most tech geekers likes to associate “modern” with
“Microsoft” which they hate. But if we want to be hardcore, lots of
emacs's terms is invented by itself and not logical.
The following is a excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Common User
Access↗:
-------------------
CUA was a detailed specification and set strict rules about how
applications should look and function. Its aim was in part to bring
about harmony between MS-DOS applications, which until then had
implemented totally different user interfaces.
Examples:
* In WordPerfect, the command to open a file was [F7], [3].
* In Lotus 1-2-3, a file was opened with [/] (to open the
menus), [W] (for Workspace), [R] (for Retrieve).
* In Microsoft Word, a file was opened with [Esc] (to open the
menus), [T] (for Transfer), [L] (for Load).
* In WordStar, it was [Ctrl]+[K]+[O].
* In Emacs, a file was opened with [Ctrl]+[x] followed by
[Ctrl]+[f] (for find-file).
Some programs used [Esc] to cancel an action, some used it to
complete one; WordPerfect used it to repeat a character. Some programs
used [End] to go to the end of a line, some used it to complete
filling in a form. [F1] was often help but in WordPerfect that was
[F3]. [Ins] sometimes toggled between overtype and inserting
characters, but some programs used it for “paste”.
Thus, every program had to be learned individually and its
complete user interface memorized. It was a sign of expertise to have
learned the UIs of dozens of applications, since a novice user facing
a new program would find their existing knowledge of a similar
application absolutely no use whatsoever.
-------------------
Who is to say, that the DOS era (~1990) of Microsoft Word's system of
shortcuts is not consistent and superior and more extensible than the
modern Ctrl+‹key› ones? Heck, it even used the words “Transfer” and
“Load”, which describes the technical detail of what's happening more
correctly than the popular “Open”.
-------------------
The purpose of a standard, or standard terminology and notation, is so
that everyone understands it without having to spend time on app xyz.
There are always drawbacks with one particular way, but overall
standards do good for all.
> The advantage is that you can use the menus the same way as you are used
> to in other w32 programs.
>
> I think it is much better to clearly tell new users the distinction.
> They will need to know it at least on w32 from the beginning, cause
> otherwise they will get confused by that the menus does not work (if
> they use Alt as Meta).
Emacs features remains they are. Any user can easily learn and use all
the features as before.
-----------------------
Even technically, Meta is just wrong. There is no Meta key except Sun
Microsystem's keyboard with perhaps 0.0001% market share.
Emacs did not adapt the changing landscape of computing industry, and
emacs suffers greatly for it today, with dwindling user base (possibly
just 1% of professional programers) while all sort of less power IDEs
and editors sprang up even today (e.g. in recent years TextMate ($63
USD)) with large number of enthuisastic users who basically has no
idea what power or flexiblity emacs has.
PS previous post on “Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
is now archived here:
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
«The Meta name isn't in some linguistic sense superior that covers
different modifier keys on different OSes. It was one of the modifier
On Jul 25, 5:05 pm, Florian Beck wrote:
«Actually, Meta is the name X11 gives to one of the modifier keys.
Others are control, alt, super and hyper.»
I am sure Lisp Machine's keyboards predate X11. One way to start
research on this is to look at Wikipedia.
Unless, you actually have knowledge in the history of the subject. In
that case, sorry. Please give us more detail, i'm interested to know
about the origin of the Meta personally.
Thanks.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
formido
> > More generally, when confronted by a menu command, how can I easily go
> > to its definition?
>
> Type Alt+x describe-key, then pull the menu. Then, you'll get the
> command name run by that menu. Then, type Alt+x describe-function.
> It'll pop up the online doc of the function with link to the source
> code where the function is defined.
>
> Xah
> ∑http://xahlee.org/
>
Sweet!
Michael
Lennart Borgman (gmail)
You can also
C-h k
and then pull the menu. (Or `F1 k' which is equivalent.) This will
directly show then function documentation.
Thierry Volpiatto
> You can also
>
> C-h k
>
> and then pull the menu. (Or `F1 k' which is equivalent.) This will
> directly show then function documentation.
>
>
And to see the function itself you can do
M-x find-function-on-key RET your_key RET
,----[ C-h f find-function-on-key RET ]
| find-function-on-key is an interactive compiled Lisp function in
| `find-func.el'.
|
| It is bound to C-h K, <f1> K, <help> K.
|
| (find-function-on-key key)
|
| Find the function that key invokes. key is a string.
| Set mark before moving, if the buffer already existed.
|
| [back]
`----
And bind it to for exemple:
,----
| (global-set-key (kbd "\C-hK") 'find-function-on-key)
`----
--
A + Thierry Volpiatto
Location: Saint-Cyr-Sur-Mer - France
Nikolaj Schumacher
> Here're some reason i think emacs should adopt the Alt+‹key› or
> Alt-‹key› notation throughout its documentation.
This mailing list is not for feature suggestions or bug reports.
regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher
Thien-Thi Nguyen
() Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:42:00 +0200
This mailing list is not for feature suggestions or bug reports.
Right, it's for bug suggestions and feature reports, instead. :-D
thi
Ted Zlatanov
X> On Jul 25, 9:41 am, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:55:29 -0700 (PDT)Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
X> But you can run it by typing Alt+x shell-command (shortcut Alt+x !)
>>
>> Please note that Alt is not the preferred prefix name for Emacs
>> purposes. It's Meta, abbreviated M (e.g. M-x), for two reasons:
>>
>> 1) Meta can be mapped to keys other than Alt
>>
>> 2) Meta can be invoked with ESC as well, which is very handy in a
>> terminal session (I actually use ESC all the time even in a graphical
>> session)
X> Here're some reason i think emacs should adopt the Alt+‹key› or
X> Alt-‹key› notation throughout its documentation.
X> • The Alt+‹key› or Alt-‹key› notation is universal among Windows and
X> Linux.
X> It was one of the modifier key on obsolete keyboards used by lisp
X> machines in the 1980s.
Meta is not the name of the key, it's the modifier name in today's
Emacs. As I said, the modifier can be bound to any key (sorry I didn't
state the terminology clearly originally). Many think this is a plus.
I doubt your suggestion will find much support because it would break a
convention that goes back (AFAIK) far further than Windows or Linux.
You have to consider the *cost* of breaking something like the Meta
convention, not just the benefit. But feel free to suggest it through
the proper channels as others have mentioned.
Ted
Xah Lee
> Meta is not the name of the key, it's the modifier name in today's
> Emacs.
As i mentioned previously, Meta was the name of a key, of which
emacs's term Meta came from.
> As I said, the modifier can be bound to any key (sorry I didn't
> state the terminology clearly originally). Many think this is a plus.
It doesn't make sense to use a name that's obsolete.
> I doubt your suggestion will find much support because it would break a
> convention that goes back (AFAIK) far further than Windows or Linux.
In technology, terminologies and meaning change rather fast. Some
stays, some gone, not necessarily corresponding to better or worse
with respect to the quality of terms.
> You have to consider the *cost* of breaking something like the Meta
> convention, not just the benefit.
The cost of changing emacs's notation from “M-‹key›” to “Alt+‹key›” in
emacs's manual is about maybe 4 hour's work by a few interactive find-
replace operations in emacs, helped with eye balling.
There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.
Old emacs users might get a mental shock for the first hour when their
hear about this change in emacs 23's change log, that's about it. Same
for “C-” vs “Ctrl+” notation.
> But feel free to suggest it through
> the proper channels as others have mentioned.
Thanks. If you find this point about notation in manual has some
merit, please help me set records straight. You can mention it to
your emacs buddies, or link to my article in your blog, etc.
When this issue came up, a lot tech geekers will just think “Oh i
don't want emacs to become another Microsoft Word or be dumbed down”,
which is not rational.
-----------------------
PS I clarified and extended some points about the issue today, please
see:
“Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
The essay's sub headings pretty much summarize it:
• Universally understood
• Notation Same as Key Label
• Meta is Alt in practice
• Keyboards don't have Meta key today
• Misc
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah Lee
Thank you. I'm aware of it though.
Perhaps we can blame Ted, he started to correct me or point out about
my use of the notation of “Alt+‹key›”.
To wit, he said:
«
Please note that Alt is not the preferred prefix name for Emacs
purposes. It's Meta, abbreviated M (e.g. M-x), for two reasons:
1) ...
2) ...
»
Note his use of the word “preferred”, and he gave reasons. I don't
agree that it is not preferred, and i don't agree about the reasons he
gave. So, I replied with my justfication. Lenart and Florian replied
to discuss further, and i did too.
I clarified and extended some points about the issue today, please
see:
“Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
The essay's sub headings pretty much summarize it:
• Universally understood
• Notation Same as Key Label
• Meta is Alt in practice
• Keyboards don't have Meta key today
• Misc
By the way, it's a classic netiquette that chiding for off topicality
is in general not a good thing. Namely, if this channel is not for
feature suggestion, nor is it for telling others it is not. Because,
that usually leads to more argument. Btw, the netquette is in one of
the RFC.
I have written a lot about netiquette actually, please have a look
here
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/troll.html
Comment and feedback welcome.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Lennart Borgman (gmail)
> The cost of changing emacs's notation from “M-‹key›” to “Alt+‹key›” in
> emacs's manual is about maybe 4 hour's work by a few interactive find-
> replace operations in emacs, helped with eye balling.
>
> There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
> understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.
How do you know there is no cost to users? Why do you think they
immediately understand "Alt+<key>"?
In the setup I recommend on w32 that will mean that they should type
"Windows-key + <key>".
I think I told you this before.
Xah Lee
«There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.»
Lennart Borgman wrote:
«How do you know there is no cost to users? Why do you think they
immediately understand "Alt+<key>"?»
“if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it
isn't, it ain't. That's logic.” — Tweedledee in Alice In Wonderland.
haha.
But seriously, because the user can look at the keyboard, see the a
key with “Alt” printed on it.
See my expanded, more coherent argument on this here:
“Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
http://xahlee.org//emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
> In the setup I recommend on w32 that will mean that they should type
> "Windows-key + <key>".
>
> I think I told you this before.
You are the author of the emacs distro for windows known as EmacsW32
right?
gosh, the few times i tried to find out its author, it's rather not
straight forward. I rather hope you would just put your name on the
front page. These days, perhaps due to OpenSource and wiki-this-that's
thought invasion, people don't put their names up front anymore.
Anytime i tried to find out the author of a blog, or some emacs
package or software, it's often not straight forward. Perhaps 50%
caused by wanting to remain anonymous and security, 50% caused by
absurd OpenSource movement induced moral ethic of refraining from
taking proper credit, and 50% by fear of actually taking
responsibility. (this is in contrast to my life style, where i: ★ Not
afraid to say things. (haha, maybe too loud) ★ Take proper credit. ★
Take responsibility.)
anyway, although i have met you online maybe since a year ago (recall
once you initiated a email exchange) and have linked to your site
(see http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_basics.html ), but only this week i
thought to myself in these threads: “hey, aint't that the emacsw32”
guy?
kk, sorry for rambling. Back to topic...
well, actually i'm surprised that you disagree with some of my points.
Although i haven't used your emacsw32 (cause i don't have Windows
now), but i've read that you were frustrated by emacs's usibility and
that's why you made emacsw32.
For example, i believe the following from
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsW32
is written by you:
«I may be the only person on this planet who thinks that it is too
difficult to begin using Emacs on MS Windows. However I did find some
things unnecessarily difficult.»
So, i was surprised you disagree with some of my emacs modernization
suggestions.
Ok, more specifically, in our topic here, you want the Alt key to
behave like other Windows apps. Namely, it invokes menu when pressed
by itself, and invoke command when pressed together with another key.
In other words, conforming to Window's UI guidelines.
As you know, on Apple's OSX, it follows a slightly different GUI
guideline. In particular, in OSX there's no such key like Window's Alt
that invokes a menu by itself... (traditinoally, Windows UI is
designed such that users can operate the computer by keyboard alone
without a mouse; but traditionlly Apple doesn't do this unless you
count turning keypad into a pointing device... but since about ~2004
in OSX Apple started to have a bunch of keys (usually Ctrl+Fn) to
navigate GUI elements... In short, how user uses keyboard to operate
the computer follows quite a different model than on Windows)
Anyway, i'm getting quite long winded on this since the Apple and
Windows model of keyboard navigation on UI is different and has
different history.
But the point i want to make is that, when we consider modernization
of emacs, w can create one Windows Emacs that follows Window's way,
one Apple Emacs distro that follows Apple's way. Or, we can modernize
emacs based on emacs own unique way.
Am i getting confused? =(^_^)=
if i think correctly, you always stands by the Windows way. So, in
your opinion, my suggestion for using the notation “Alt+‹key›” for
emacs's “M-‹key›” is not good because that's incompatible with the
Window's way of pressing Alt by itself to invoke graphical menu.
Yes i can see that'd be a problem. But your Windows way is a nutcase,
and is not compatible with emacs tradition anyway. LOLz! I hope emacs
developers here will flame you to death first.
Of course, we are getting onto a philosophical issue of whether to
have one's own interface or follow one of the major OS. The Java
platform tried to force its own interface (e.g. widgets looks and
feel), but basically failed. When a java program runs on Windows,
people want it to look and feel like Windows. When it runs on Mac,
people want it to look and feel like Mac. Basically, the crucial
factor is just market share. People are habituated with whatever they
are. They dont want to change. Java tried to squeeze its UI look and
feel starting with 0% market share into the meaty Windows UI or Mac
UI; sure it fails.
However, with emacs, i think emacs has a chance to stand on its own.
Because, as you know, emacs precedes Windows or Mac.
So, in the end, i just think your Alt=“menu invoke” philosophy on the
whole must be sacrifised.
But no worries, even we adapt the notation “Alt+‹key›” for “M-‹key›”
in emacs manual, your emacsW32 really wouldn't suffer a hitch.
Because, in either case, you are modifier emacs's default behavier
anyway. Right now, you customized emacs in your distro so that Meta is
no longer default to Alt, but default to the WindowKey, while the Alt
invoke menu. But if we adopt the shortcut notation change as i
suggested, you don't need to change a single line in your emacsW32
customization, just the philosophy of what has been customized.
OK, sorry i punched my keyboad too fast for too long.
Most of these i wrote before actually.
Here's a excerpt from
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization.html
------------------------------------
Also, Aquamacs changes emacs to conform to Apple's user interface
guidelines as much as possible. For example, besides changing the many
shortcuts, Aquamacs open each file in a new window (i.e. what emacs
calls frame). So, dired is opened in its own window. “shell-command”
is opened in a new window. Emacs info files (C-h i) is opened in a new
window. Using the graphical menu “Help:Aquamacs Help” launches Apple's
help application. Aquamacs makes emacs palpable for Mac users, but in
many ways, Aquamacs imposes a major change of operation for people
already familiar with emacs. Its modernization of emacs, has priority
with Mac application's system of operation over emacs system of
operation.
Aquamacs is only a Mac application. Its user interface changes, is not
wholly compatible with Microsoft Windows's user interface guidelines
in minor details. (in particular, shortcut modifiers are different
(Ctrl vs Cmd), and some shortcut keys differ) 90% of computer users
world wide are familiar with Window's user interface and are using PC
keyboards. If we consider improving emacs's user interface, then it is
important to consider the familarity of vast majority of computer
users.
In summary, when we consider modernization, we could create a version
for Mac, a version for Windows, each follows as much as possible of
each operating system's user interface guidelines. Alternatively, we
can consider modernization based on emacs's unique ways of operation
(as opposed changing emacs to comform to a particular company's UI
standard that are currently most popular).
--------------------------
for some detailed analysis of the difference of modifier keys usage
and history between Win and Mac, see:
Difference Between Apple and PC keyboards
http://xahlee.org/emacs/apple_pc_kb_diff.html
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Ted Zlatanov
XL> On Jul 28, 6:39 am, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>> You have to consider the *cost* of breaking something like the Meta
>> convention, not just the benefit.
XL> The cost of changing emacs's notation from “M-‹key›” to “Alt+‹key›” in
XL> emacs's manual is about maybe 4 hour's work by a few interactive find-
XL> replace operations in emacs, helped with eye balling.
XL> There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
XL> understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.
XL> Old emacs users might get a mental shock for the first hour when their
XL> hear about this change in emacs 23's change log, that's about it. Same
XL> for “C-” vs “Ctrl+” notation.
OK, since you're not even remotely connected to reality, I'll drop this
topic.
>> But feel free to suggest it through the proper channels as others
>> have mentioned.
XL> Thanks. If you find this point about notation in manual has some
XL> merit, please help me set records straight. You can mention it to
XL> your emacs buddies, or link to my article in your blog, etc.
You don't understand. I am against this change (for reasons I listed),
but I encourage you to submit it through the proper channels if you want
to have any chance of making it happen. Otherwise you're wasting
everyone's time.
I don't have a blog. I don't have "emacs buddies." I don't have time
to debate this since you don't appear to have any interest in reality.
XL> Perhaps we can blame Ted, he started to correct me or point out about
XL> my use of the notation of “Alt+‹key›”.
...
XL> Note his use of the word “preferred”, and he gave reasons. I don't
XL> agree that it is not preferred, and i don't agree about the reasons he
XL> gave.
I go by what's in the Emacs manual. You go by your opinion. Which do
you think is more useful to a user?
Ted
Xah Lee
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:02:09 -0700 (PDT)XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
> XL> On Jul 28, 6:39 am, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>
> >> You have to consider the *cost* of breaking something like the Meta
> >> convention, not just the benefit.
>
> XL> The cost of changing emacs's notation from “M-‹key›” to “Alt+‹key›” in
> XL> emacs's manual is about maybe 4 hour's work by a few interactive find-
> XL> replace operations in emacs, helped with eye balling.
>
> XL> There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
> XL> understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.
> XL> Old emacs users might get a mental shock for the first hour when their
> XL> hear about this change in emacs 23's change log, that's about it. Same
> XL> for “C-” vs “Ctrl+” notation.
>
> OK, since you're not even remotely connected to reality, I'll drop this
> topic.
Hum?
I tried to answer your question.
> >> But feel free to suggest it through the proper channels as others
> >> have mentioned.
>
> XL> Thanks. If you find this point about notation in manual has some
> XL> merit, please help me set records straight. You can mention it to
> XL> your emacs buddies, or link to my article in your blog, etc.
>
> You don't understand. I am against this change (for reasons I listed),
> but I encourage you to submit it through the proper channels if you want
> to have any chance of making it happen. Otherwise you're wasting
> everyone's time.
I'm aware you are against the change. I thought i answered your
question though. No need be rude ok? I tried not to.
> I don't have a blog. I don't have "emacs buddies." I don't have time
> to debate this since you don't appear to have any interest in reality.
I have interest in discussion. You are the one first started the issue
about my use of the Alt+‹key› notation in this message:
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/msg/e8592f0da7dec5e1?
I replied to answer your complain.
Ok, i think i understand now. You are not a native English speaker.
Perhaps in your original message, all you are trying to say is to tell
the original poster that “Alt+‹key›” is not emacs's conventional
notation for keyboard shortcuts. Is that all you are trying to say?
Never mind my replies then.
> XL> Perhaps we can blame Ted, he started to correct me or point out about
> XL> my use of the notation of “Alt+‹key›”.
> ...
> XL> Note his use of the word “preferred”, and he gave reasons. I don't
> XL> agree that it is not preferred, and i don't agree about the reasons he
> XL> gave.
>
> I go by what's in the Emacs manual. You go by your opinion. Which do
> you think is more useful to a user?
Emacs manual is written by people, and it solicits corrections and
suggestions.
Any manual, improves by corrections and suggestions. Books works that
way too. Many of the corrections and suggestions are from the readers,
such as you and me.
In this thread, the discussion came to the point where i offered a
suggestion. You don't agree. That's ok. Good to know. Maybe it is
good, maybe it is bad, maybe emacs will will change, maybe not. No
problem.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Ted Zlatanov
XL> On Jul 28, 12:57 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:02:09 -0700 (PDT)XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
XL> The cost of changing emacs's notation from “M-‹key›” to “Alt+‹key›” in
XL> emacs's manual is about maybe 4 hour's work by a few interactive find-
XL> replace operations in emacs, helped with eye balling.
>>
XL> There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
XL> understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.
XL> Old emacs users might get a mental shock for the first hour when their
XL> hear about this change in emacs 23's change log, that's about it. Same
XL> for “C-” vs “Ctrl+” notation.
>>
>> OK, since you're not even remotely connected to reality, I'll drop this
>> topic.
XL> I tried to answer your question.
If you think the cost is 4 hours of work and none to the users, I think
you're disconnected from reality (or have no experience writing manuals,
software, and doing user support).
>> You don't understand. I am against this change (for reasons I listed),
>> but I encourage you to submit it through the proper channels if you want
>> to have any chance of making it happen. Otherwise you're wasting
>> everyone's time.
XL> I'm aware you are against the change. I thought i answered your
XL> question though. No need be rude ok? I tried not to.
My point is that debating here is not going to make the change happen.
If you feel strongly, propose the change and discuss it through the
proper channels. I am not being rude.
XL> I have interest in discussion. You are the one first started the issue
XL> about my use of the Alt+‹key› notation in this message:
XL> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/msg/e8592f0da7dec5e1?
XL> I replied to answer your complain.
It's not a complaint, it's a correction based on the Emacs manual.
>> I go by what's in the Emacs manual. You go by your opinion. Which do
>> you think is more useful to a user?
XL> Emacs manual is written by people, and it solicits corrections and
XL> suggestions.
XL> Any manual, improves by corrections and suggestions. Books works that
XL> way too. Many of the corrections and suggestions are from the readers,
XL> such as you and me.
I agree. Make the suggestion through the proper channels; meanwhile
let's keep using Meta when we help users (feel free to make a note that
Alt is the default key bound to that modifier on most modern systems).
Otherwise you're not helping users as much as you could, and you'll keep
getting corrected.
Ted
Xah Lee
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:28:19 -0700 (PDT)XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
> XL> On Jul 28, 12:57 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:>> On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:02:09 -0700 (PDT)XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
> XL> The cost of changing emacs's notation from “M-‹key›” to “Alt+‹key›” in
> XL> emacs's manual is about maybe 4 hour's work by a few interactive find-
> XL> replace operations in emacs, helped with eye balling.
>
> XL> There is basically no cost to users. Any new user will immediately
> XL> understand “Alt+‹key›” and perhaps feel this is a great improvement.
> XL> Old emacs users might get a mental shock for the first hour when their
> XL> hear about this change in emacs 23's change log, that's about it. Same
> XL> for “C-” vs “Ctrl+” notation.
>
>
>
> >> OK, since you're not even remotely connected to reality, I'll drop this
> >> topic.
>
> XL> I tried to answer your question.
>
> If you think the cost is 4 hours of work and none to the users, I think
> you're disconnected from reality (or have no experience writing manuals,
> software, and doing user support).
Huh?
What exactly is your reason? What exactly is your argument about my
paragraph? You have to give explicit reason to disagree. You cannot
simply say i'm disconnected from reality. That makes no sense. Maybe
it is obvious to you. But i sincerely don't know what you are talking
about.
> >> You don't understand. I am against this change (for reasons I listed),
> >> but I encourage you to submit it through the proper channels if you want
> >> to have any chance of making it happen. Otherwise you're wasting
> >> everyone's time.
>
> XL> I'm aware you are against the change. I thought i answered your
> XL> question though. No need be rude ok? I tried not to.
>
> My point is that debating here is not going to make the change happen.
> If you feel strongly, propose the change and discuss it through the
> proper channels. I am not being rude.
What makes you think that i think debating here a lot and change will
happen? And why you feel like needing to give me advice? Do you know
that giving unasked advice is insulting?
Can i teach you something too? The thing i want to teach is that, if
you want to drop a conversation, one effective way is to start by
yourself.
> XL> I have interest in discussion. You are the one first started the issue
> XL> about my use of the Alt+‹key› notation in this message:
> XL>http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/msg/e8592f0da7dec5e1?
>
> XL> I replied to answer your complain.
>
> It's not a complaint, it's a correction based on the Emacs manual.
>
> >> I go by what's in the Emacs manual. You go by your opinion. Which do
> >> you think is more useful to a user?
>
> XL> Emacs manual is written by people, and it solicits corrections and
> XL> suggestions.
>
> XL> Any manual, improves by corrections and suggestions. Books works that
> XL> way too. Many of the corrections and suggestions are from the readers,
> XL> such as you and me.
>
> I agree. Make the suggestion through the proper channels; meanwhile
> let's keep using Meta when we help users (feel free to make a note that
> Alt is the default key bound to that modifier on most modern systems).
> Otherwise you're not helping users as much as you could, and you'll keep
> getting corrected.
O, so you want me to stap using the “Alt+‹key›” notation in
gnu.emacs.help, is that it?
I don't think you write very clearly. In the beginning of the thread,
when you wrote: «Please note that Alt is not the preferred prefix name
for Emacs
purposes. It's Meta, abbreviated M (e.g. M-x), for two reasons: ...»
by that do you mean:
(1) just to let any newbie readers know that “Alt+‹key›” is not
emacs's conventional notation. “M-‹key›” is.
(2) Xah, you should stop using the “Alt+‹key›” notation in here.
Because that's misleading. If you must, please also mention that
“M-‹key›” is the emacs way.
(3) Xah, your “Alt+‹key›” is just incorrect.
What point are you making? A combination of them?
Now i have exchanged about 4 or 5 posts with you. In the beginning i
assumed you mean (3). Then, in your last message i thought you
actually means (1) and is very kind, just not a native English speaker
that's all. But now, it seems you mean (2), or all of the above.
What do you want? Why you telling me what to do?
If you want me to stop using “Alt+‹key›” in my post here, then, i'm
sorry, i cannot comply because you have no right.
If you think that my use “Alt+‹key›” is just totally wrong in the
context of emacs. Sorry, i disagree.
If you want to post a warning message everytime i used “Alt+‹key›”, so
that newbies understands that it is not emacs's conventional notation,
that's fine.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Nikolaj Schumacher
> By the way, it's a classic netiquette that chiding for off topicality
> is in general not a good thing. Namely, if this channel is not for
> feature suggestion, nor is it for telling others it is not. Because,
> that usually leads to more argument. Btw, the netquette is in one of
> the RFC.
Why would I intend less argument?
Really, I do want this topic to be explored and I'm not disregarding it
at all. I am merely saying it should be discussed with participation of
the developers. The only way of "succeeding" is going through them,
anyway. And it seems unfair to bring up the issue here, where they
can't comment on why things have stayed the way they are. Maybe the
only reason some parts of Emacs haven't been updated is because of
missing man power. Who knows? Maybe you can start on those 4 hours of
query-replace, then.
regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher
Lennart Borgman (gmail)
> well, actually i'm surprised that you disagree with some of my points.
That is good. Then you have noticed I disagree ;-)
> Ok, more specifically, in our topic here, you want the Alt key to
> behave like other Windows apps. Namely, it invokes menu when pressed
> by itself, and invoke command when pressed together with another key.
> In other words, conforming to Window's UI guidelines.
Yes. I believe that on Windows it should do that. Otherwise a lot of
users will be scared away.
> As you know, on Apple's OSX, it follows a slightly different GUI
> guideline. In particular, in OSX there's no such key like Window's Alt
> that invokes a menu by itself... (traditinoally, Windows UI is
> designed such that users can operate the computer by keyboard alone
> without a mouse; but traditionlly Apple doesn't do this unless you
> count turning keypad into a pointing device... but since about ~2004
> in OSX Apple started to have a bunch of keys (usually Ctrl+Fn) to
> navigate GUI elements... In short, how user uses keyboard to operate
> the computer follows quite a different model than on Windows)
Thanks. I did not know about this. I guess what happened is that the
accessibility requirements forced Apple to do allow keyboard navigation.
I think that is good.
I fear however that it is a bit unfortunate they invented their own way.
This can perhaps make things worse for people with disabilities. (And
it makes me wonder about Apple's priorities.)
> if i think correctly, you always stands by the Windows way. So, in
> your opinion, my suggestion for using the notation “Alt+‹key›” for
> emacs's “M-‹key›” is not good because that's incompatible with the
> Window's way of pressing Alt by itself to invoke graphical menu.
>
> Yes i can see that'd be a problem. But your Windows way is a nutcase,
> and is not compatible with emacs tradition anyway. LOLz! I hope emacs
> developers here will flame you to death first.
They already have. This is my second incarnation. Or is it the third?
You kind of loose your memory.
> Of course, we are getting onto a philosophical issue of whether to
> have one's own interface or follow one of the major OS. The Java
> platform tried to force its own interface (e.g. widgets looks and
> feel), but basically failed. When a java program runs on Windows,
> people want it to look and feel like Windows. When it runs on Mac,
> people want it to look and feel like Mac. Basically, the crucial
> factor is just market share. People are habituated with whatever they
> are. They dont want to change. Java tried to squeeze its UI look and
> feel starting with 0% market share into the meaty Windows UI or Mac
> UI; sure it fails.
I think the lesson from Java is obvious: do what people expect on
different platform. They expect Alt to activate the menus on Windows.
But of course in Emacs make it an option. Never force it on the users.
The current policy is that a standard Emacs (ie "emacs -Q") should
behave the same on all platform. It is not a bad choice (but does not
work since Emacs to be useful in many cases requires helper programs).
There is however nothing that prevents you and other to write different
schemes corresponding to different platform for users to easily choose
from. I have written some tools for it. And very good tools like
cua-mode and Viper are included in Emacs.
> However, with emacs, i think emacs has a chance to stand on its own.
> Because, as you know, emacs precedes Windows or Mac.
That does not matter. Users (except those who already use Emacs) does
not care about that.
Xah Lee
> XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
> > By the way, it's a classic netiquette that chiding for off topicality
> > is in general not a good thing. Namely, if this channel is not for
> > feature suggestion, nor is it for telling others it is not. Because,
> > that usually leads to more argument. Btw, the netquette is in one of
> > the RFC.
>
> Why would I intend less argument?
> Really, I do want this topic to be explored and I'm not disregarding it
> at all. I am merely saying it should be discussed with participation of
> the developers. The only way of "succeeding" is going through them,
> anyway. And it seems unfair to bring up the issue here, where they
> can't comment on why things have stayed the way they are.
thanks for encouraging the discussion.
No, i don't think discussing here will make emacs change. However, i
do think it does help make problems visible. I mean, the visibility
will be increased, so developers are more likely to know about this
issue whether they agree it's a prob or not. After all, many emacs
developers read here i was told.
> Maybe the
> only reason some parts of Emacs haven't been updated is because of
> missing man power. Who knows? Maybe you can start on those 4 hours of
> query-replace, then.
Thanks for the encouragement. I just might down the road start my own
emacs cult... creating a emacs distro that's just my ideal of what
functional, BEST efficient, software should be like. I have actually
thought about this several times in the past year. For one thing, it's
very difficult to change GNU Emacs on issues such as these.
The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did. Then, it'll wipe out
emacs marketshare almost overnight. Then, the GNU Emacs people will,
without any asking, seriously do all the changes, as it happened with
Xemacs. (in my opinion, Xemacs is largely responsible for propelling
user oriennted features we see in emacs today, took emacs about a
decade to catch up.)
So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
own emacs distro. The actually coding part for the latter will prob be
dwarfed by all the associated tasks of running a website with public
annoucement and communities etc.
When i run my own emacs distro, info doc will be considered
supplementary to html/xhtml. HTML will be the primary doc format, with
its 1000 times more user base and tools and perhaps 10 times more
technically powerful and flexible. But likely the html will still be
generated by texinfo. Doc in info format will still be used i think,
since it's a beautiful plain text hyperlink doc system. (ok, i'm
allowed to have some wild future vision here...)
PS one element that came to me i missed in the discussion of the labor
of using the Alt+‹key› notation in emacs is that the notation should
also show in menus, of course. (as opposed to just changing the info
doc) I haven't looked at coding menus in elisp... would it be just
change one source code location for keybinding display and all menus
of every mode will display using the “Alt+‹key›” notation?
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Eli Zaretskii
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:54:35 -0700 (PDT)
>
> After all, many emacs developers read here i was told.
Most of them don't, actually. Whoever told you otherwise was wrong.
And your ``problems'' are actually features as far as most Emacs
developers are concerned. The fact that Emacs behaves almost
identically on all platforms is considered by most Emacs developers
(and by many users) a virtue, not a disadvantage. Lennart is in
minority here.
So there's little chance your suggestions, even if you take them up
through the proper channels, will be accepted. Using Alt instead of
Meta in the manual means that we will need to have several variants of
the manual, one each for every platform/keyboard where the Meta key is
not Alt by default. That is a step backwards, not forward.
It's your choice, of course, but you might as well stop your campaign,
and use the energy elsewhere.
Xah
> > From:XahLee<x...@xahlee.org>
> > Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:54:35 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > After all, many emacs developers read here i was told.
>
> Most of them don't, actually. Whoever told you otherwise was wrong.
thanks for setting this correct.
... wait, but it was you who told me so here few months back i think.
But nevermind. :)
> And your ``problems'' are actually features as far as most Emacs
> developers are concerned. The fact that Emacs behaves almost
> identically on all platforms is considered by most Emacs developers
> (and by many users) a virtue, not a disadvantage. Lennart is in
> minority here.
I don't see my suggestion for emacs to adapt the “Alt+‹key›” notation
should be classified as a “feature”. Between Feature and Bug, i'd say
it's a bug, if forced.
Remember, in my article
“Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
The main reasons i gave are:
• Universally understood
• Identical To Key's Label
• Meta is Alt in practice
• Keyboards don't have Meta key today
So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
become obsolete.
As i mentioned, the computing industry changes relative fast.
(tech geekers wants to think: Fashion! FAD! No, stop that. Sure
there's fashion and fad, for example i consider eXtreme Programing,
Programming Patterns, Universal Modeling Lang, fashion and fads that
does us no good. But we are not talking about fahsion and fad here.
Also, what's you consider fashion and fad may actually turns out
fundamental in human progress. For example, the commercializing of the
web, with estores and ebay and paypal and all, in the late 1990s. Many
hardcore techgeekers, will admantly shout STUPIDITY. Same has been
said about blogging, css, javascript, cookies, and today many tech
geekers hold contempt for things like youtube.
(actually i wrote about this yesterday in comp.lang.lisp, here's a
excerpt: (as a example of a characteristic thought pattern of these
people... one can image they are the type of guys who said computers
should never adopt the mouse (~1990), GUI (~1990), the web should not
commercialize (~1995), web should not have cookies (~1997), css or
javascript (~1998), source code should never have syntax coloring (mid
1990s), blogging is for teens (early 2000s), Wikipedia is for morons
(~2004). In their quite strong opinion, these type of features or
changes are a waste of computing cycle, fad, or for kids or dumbing
down society, when these things were in their early days and their
future is not certain.) ) )
> And your ``problems'' are actually features as far as most Emacs
> developers are concerned. The fact that Emacs behaves almost
> identically on all platforms is considered by most Emacs developers
> (and by many users) a virtue, not a disadvantage. Lennart is in
> minority here.
In my suggestion, i suggest that emacs should one single version that
works on any OS with the same emacs-UI. (as opposed to, one conforming
to Mac OS X, another for MS Windows.) You perhaps misread me there.
Yes, Lennart is a minority. I dunno what's his prob.
Oh, another point i wanted to make before, was that OpenSource
software often takes a 5 to 10 years lag of adopting features from the
commercial wold.
Syntax coloring, for example, i think by 1995 is in every commercial
software. (when did it came to emacs?)
Mouse support...
Font ...
Unicode ...
GUI support ...
I'm actually don't have solid historical facts for the above points as
i liked... but anyway i just want to write instead of like doing 10
years of research and post 1 article and got overflooded.
well the point is that, many of these features often gets laughed and
sneered at by some hardcore guys. But in the end, the goodness, as
determined by society, every body, dummies or not dummies, decides
what becomes the norm. So, linux started to adopt just about Windows
UI wholesale in 1998, with, of course, wide decryment from tech
geekers on how it shouldn't be, how it is dumbed down.
Today, after 10 years, of various distros and Lindows etc trumpeting
on how easy it is to use, linux is still struggling to enter much of
market share with Windows or Mac, but now you'll encounter hardcore
tech geekers who will break his head in telling you how EASY linux is
to use now, that all “difficult” is in the past only. (he dreams!)
Ok, the point i want to make, is that make of these tech geeekr's
attitude, is just wrong. Not rational. Granted, sometimes i, too,
often sneer and mistake important something to be fad. For exampl,
when Instant Messaging just began in 1999, by such as AOL. I was like,
never really thought about it but if asked, i think it's for teens.
Well, one coworker asked me to sign on at work, and i was rather
displeased about it but did, because it was to discuss work related
issues. (i'm in CA, she's in KS) Then after the initial month of using
it with some thought of distaste, i find it's quite fun. I mean, you
can chat to ohter girls. Never the less, i didnt think too high of IM.
Still consider it some type of teen fad i wouldn't want to associate
myself with.
But after a few years, say by 2004, or now 2008, you do realize that
IM in fact has made a significant social impact. I'm no socialologist
by training, but if you ask a sociologist who studies technology's
role in human history, i'll bet IM is one of the significant tech that
had made impact in how we human animals lived or worked.
okie, i think i started to write too much. better stop now.
So back to emacs.... there was CUA mode. I don't know the history of
the mode, but it is my guess that mode has been floating out there for
quite some time before it is part of emacs. I think there must be huge
resistance back then, even today, the use of it is somewhat
controversial, and geekers are shy to admit they use it because that
somehow makes them “Microsoft Kiddies”.
lookking at the CUA mode source, i see it started in 1997.
When is it bundled in emacs? Let's say in 2000.
Now, when is copy cut paste using xcv keys standard across mac and
windows? prob around 1995 with the popularity of Windows 3.x. From
1995 to 2000 is like 5 years. Took emcas 5 years to adapt, yet not
even complete because it's not default but just Optional (very
extreemly stupid).
y'know, unix geeks and hardcore geeks like to have options. one
hundred options. Like in unix tools, you have 100 options, each
overstep another. In Window Manafers under X before KDE/Gnome days,
each has one million options. It's all about setting up, learning,
experimenting, so you are not a Microsoft Kiddie.
Ok, perhaps a summary about my points. One is that tech geek often
think irrationally. They didn't analyze things from a broad, long term
social perspective, and they have a tendency to prefer the nature
nature of “hard to use”, because that intuitively makes them more
manly.
The other point is that if you research the adaption of GUI features
or practices in commercial and free software world, you'll see that
the free camp is rather slow in 5 to 10 years. If a free soft kept out
and didn't adapt gui things, it basically falls out of use and becomes
obsolete. Contrast firefox vs lynx. Emacs in fact is a good example.
Nobody uses it. lol. Yet we still have tech geekers here wnts to kill
it completely.
alright, i typed fast. this post is maybe 50 min but now it flies out
sans cleanup. I have written much better about all these points
actually, but citing my website gets tired and ignored. Better answer
question on person to person basis, is what am trying to do.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Juanma Barranquero
> I'm actually don't have solid historical facts for the above points as
> i liked... but anyway i just want to write instead of like doing 10
> years of research and post 1 article and got overflooded.
Then you're bound to make mistakes like this one:
> For exampl,
> when Instant Messaging just began in 1999, by such as AOL.
Instant Messaging started in 1996, with ICQ. AOL didn't buy it until 1998.
Juanma
Xah
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 09:25,Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm actually don't have solid historical facts for the above points as
> > i liked... but anyway i just want to write instead of like doing 10
> > years of research and post 1 article and got overflooded.
>
> Then you're bound to make mistakes like this one:
your claim is rather unjustified generalization, you think?
Lolz, it's funny.
> > For exampl,
> > when Instant Messaging just began in 1999, by such as AOL.
>
> Instant Messaging started in 1996, with ICQ. AOL didn't buy it until 1998.
Well, i was just giving out rough facts personally known to me. Not
publishing a paper. I think it's rather silly to nick pick like that.
You are ok i think, most tech geeker do that.
i usually do more quality post, but recently decided to give a
conversational style posting habit a try, like how most poeple is
using newsgroups.
for example, see:
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/how_shall_i_respond.html
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Phil Carmody
IRC predates that by forever and a day.
Phone and talk predate that by almost geological timescales.
Phil
--
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
-- Microsoft voice recognition live demonstration
Nikolaj Schumacher
> I just might down the road start my own emacs cult... creating a emacs
> distro that's just my ideal of what functional, BEST efficient,
> software should be like.[SNIP]
>
> The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
> coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did.
Please do. I don't think it's the best way to make such a change, but
it is the most effective (and perhaps only) way of proving your point:
That users want this.
Just make sure you stay as compatible as possible so that no work is
lost.
> So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> own emacs distro.
Exactly. Plus, nobody really likes salespeople. :)
> The actually coding part for the latter will prob be dwarfed by all
> the associated tasks of running a website with public annoucement and
> communities etc.
If you think there are enough users out there, you should be able to
find contributors. After all you do believe a majority preferred
modernization, right?
regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher
Alan Mackenzie
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 03:54:35PM -0700, Xah Lee wrote:
> > Maybe the only reason some parts of Emacs haven't been updated is
> > because of missing man power. Who knows? Maybe you can start on
> > those 4 hours of query-replace, then.
> Thanks for the encouragement. I just might down the road start my own
> emacs cult... creating a emacs distro that's just my ideal of what
> functional, BEST efficient, software should be like. I have actually
> thought about this several times in the past year.
Please do that! For one thing, you'll then find out just how time
consuming your changes will be to implement.
> For one thing, it's very difficult to change GNU Emacs on issues such
> as these.
It is. The difficulties are primarily technical, not political (though
they're political too).
> The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
> coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did. Then, it'll wipe out
> emacs marketshare almost overnight. Then, the GNU Emacs people will,
> without any asking, seriously do all the changes, as it happened with
> Xemacs. (in my opinion, Xemacs is largely responsible for propelling
> user oriennted features we see in emacs today, took emacs about a
> decade to catch up.)
I don't think that'll happen at all. But try it - it can't do any harm.
> So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> own emacs distro. The actually coding part for the latter will prob be
> dwarfed by all the associated tasks of running a website with public
> annoucement and communities etc.
The problem is that what you think of as "modernisation", others see as
"dumbing down".
> When i run my own emacs distro, info doc will be considered
> supplementary to html/xhtml. HTML will be the primary doc format, with
> its 1000 times more user base and tools and perhaps 10 times more
> technically powerful and flexible.
??? HTML is much less powerful than Info. Viewing info within Emacs,
you've got all the power of Emacs, and many useful viewing commands - on
top of that, info is all text, so it displays instantly, in contrast to
stuff in a web brower, which takes a noticeable time to render.
In fact, info is so far ahead of html that if some researcher from a
foreign planet were do descend on Earth and compare the two formats, he'd
think that html arrived first, then info developed from it. In fact, it
was more the other way around.
Html is ghastly for reading manuals.
> But likely the html will still be generated by texinfo. Doc in info
> format will still be used i think, since it's a beautiful plain text
> hyperlink doc system. (ok, i'm allowed to have some wild future vision
> here...)
> PS one element that came to me i missed in the discussion of the labor
> of using the â~@~\Alt+â~@ıkeyâ~@şâ~@~] notation ....
Yes, Xah, that garbage is what your squiggles look like on a terminal
which isn't equipped with squiggle filters. "Feel free" to stop dumping
such garbage on English language fora, please.
> .... in emacs is that the notation should also show in menus, of
> course. (as opposed to just changing the info doc) I haven't looked at
> coding menus in elisp... would it be just change one source code
> location for keybinding display and all menus of every mode will
> display using the ???Alt+???key?????? notation?
There are people who already use alt-key combinations in Emacs - the alt
key is not the same as the meta key. You're going to screw them. There
are people, not a few, who bind meta-key key sequences in their elisp
files. Are you going to insist on them making incompatible changes, so
that what used to be
(global-set-key '[M-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
will have to be changed to
(global-set-key '[A-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
? No, you won't. What you'll actually do, once you become aware of the
problem, is to allow the 'M' modifier to remain "for the time being", as
a backward compatibility cludge. 10 years later, if Leeemacs is still
around by then, that "temporary" cludge will still be there.
And the same will hold for countless other little details you haven't
thought through yet.
On the other hand, if you were willing to get to grips with real problems
in Emacs, you'd be most welcome to contribute.
> Xah
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Xah
> XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
> > I just might down the road start my own emacs cult... creating a emacs
> > distro that's just my ideal of what functional, BEST efficient,
> > software should be like.[SNIP]
>
> > The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
> > coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did.
>
> Please do. I don't think it's the best way to make such a change, but
> it is the most effective (and perhaps only) way of proving your point:
> That users want this.
I hope you are not suggesting that my suggestions are totally fringe
thus needs to see the light to be proven. (after all my effort in
explation here)
If any suggestion in the human world needs to be proven first, nothing
can move forward.
thanks for agreeing though. We agreed on something!
> Just make sure you stay as compatible as possible so that no work is
> lost.
>
> > So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> > modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> > own emacs distro.
>
> Exactly. Plus, nobody really likes salespeople. :)
>
> > The actually coding part for the latter will prob be dwarfed by all
> > the associated tasks of running a website with public annoucement and
> > communities etc.
>
> If you think there are enough users out there, you should be able to
> find contributors. After all you do believe a majority preferred
> modernization, right?
Yes, contributors will come. Still, a couple years of full time job to
get it going is still there.
Xemacs, started as Lucid Emacs, was run by a commercial company Lucid
Inc in the Lisp machine and Artificial Intelligence days (1980s), and
the company's eventual commercial goal, was to produce a commercial
IDE for C++, based on emacs.
The collaboration with GNU Emacs, mainly Richard M Stallman (RMS),
finally can't work out for multitudes of reasons that are often
attributed to RMS's character and GNU project's snail speed. Thus the
fork.
Aquamacs, in comparison to Xemacs in its historical context some 20
years ago, is really just few trivial UI changes. (the changes in
aquamacs in comparison to Xemacs back then, in terms of manpower, is
perhaps 10 or 100 times smaller.) Nevertheless, it took the Aquamacs
guy quite few years to come into shape, and he's not shy about asking
for donations in every release.
One way you can help the cause, is by helping to dispell myths. (the
usual term used among tech geekers today is “contructive criticism
welcome”). So, whenever this argument about modernization of emacs
comes up, and if you think there are valid points in this, you can
help by discussing facts, being positive in general and stay on topic.
(as opposed to, say, saying it's wrong place to discuss, or “it'll
never work”, or “prove it!”, or “why don't you fork it”, or
suggestions about how fork should be done, etc.)
Thanks.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
> Hi,Xah!
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 03:54:35PM -0700,XahLeewrote:
> > > Maybe the only reason some parts of Emacs haven't been updated is
> > > because of missing man power. Who knows? Maybe you can start on
> > > those 4 hours of query-replace, then.
> > Thanks for the encouragement. I just might down the road start my own
> > emacs cult... creating a emacs distro that's just my ideal of what
> > functional, BEST efficient, software should be like. I have actually
> > thought about this several times in the past year.
>
> Please do that! For one thing, you'll then find out just how time
> consuming your changes will be to implement.
there are difference between creating a fork vs the emacs team making
the changes.
For example, take this thread's issue of changing “M-‹key›” notation
to “Alt+‹key›” in emacs manual and menu.
The emacs team already have a infrastructure. So, there's mailing
list, source code depository, bug apps, ways to report bug, ways to
incorporate change, bug fixing cycle, feature adding cycle, release
cycle, established feature adding process or convention, etc.
On the other hand, to create a fork, you have to basically create the
whole infrastructure, social and technical.
Can you see there's a huge difference in manpower needed comparing the
two?
So, for example, i claim that the shortcut notation change is just few
hours work. Then somebody claims, if it is just few hours, why don't
you do it and perhaps send in the diff? Well, i'm not in any sense a
officially in gnu emacs dev team. I'm not subscribed to their mailing
list. Further, i'm not a experienced elisp coder as most of them are.
I can still say make the changes in say 1 day. Then, i have to
subscribe to the mailing list, write explanation all over again on why
i did this. Learn ways to put the code into their depository.
Basically learn all the structures they are using, etc. On the other
hand, if, say, one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation
change is a good idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
The above is somewhat simplified scenario of course. Please, no need
to nit pick. But i hope you see that there's a difference, in the
manpower needed between GNU Emacs adopting a change, vs someone
outside making the exact same change into GNU Emacs.
> > For one thing, it's very difficult to change GNU Emacs on issues such
> > as these.
>
> It is. The difficulties are primarily technical, not political (though
> they're political too).
>
> > The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
> > coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did. Then, it'll wipe out
> > emacs marketshare almost overnight. Then, the GNU Emacs people will,
> > without any asking, seriously do all the changes, as it happened with
> > Xemacs. (in my opinion, Xemacs is largely responsible for propelling
> > user oriennted features we see in emacs today, took emacs about a
> > decade to catch up.)
>
> I don't think that'll happen at all. But try it - it can't do any harm.
I do thank you for the encouragement. But, i find the naysaying too
much. Of course, it's part of discussion. But too much negative
attitude screw progress.
The issue in this thread here, is whether “Alt+‹key›” notation is
better and should be adapted by emacs. I have given i hope detailed
analysis:
“Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
and answered all replies. However, many of this replies simply are not
about facts of the subject but just naysays.
Somebody says this is not the proper place, will never work,
AOL IM was ICQ, suggesting how i should do it, advices on how fork
should be done, that i'm off from reality, etc.
In general, lots of pure naysays.
The reason i gave, about why “Alt+‹key›” is better, is summarized like
this:
• Universally understood
• Notation Same as Key Label
• Meta is Alt in practice
• Keyboards don't have Meta key today
Can you point out, if any of these points are wrong, or other reasons
this change is just bad?
You say it takes too much time to implement. How so?
emacs manual is in info format, which is generated by texinfo. The
source code is one or more plain files. As such, it can be done with
the various find/replace commands in emacs, interactively or with
regex.
I mentioned, there's another thing is changing how the shortcut is
displayed in the menu. I'm not a elisp expert (in comparison to emacs
developers), and i haven't looked at how this can be done. I'm
thinking there's just one place we can change and all mode's menu will
show shortcuts using the “Alt+” or “Ctrl+” notation. Is this true?
Do you know about this?
> > So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> > modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> > own emacs distro. The actually coding part for the latter will prob be
> > dwarfed by all the associated tasks of running a website with public
> > annoucement and communities etc.
>
> The problem is that what you think of as "modernisation", others see as
> "dumbing down".
Well, yeah, i know about that and mentioned it a few times in this
thread. But why is it dumb down? In what way it dumbed down? Let's
focus on facts and specifics. Why is the notation “Alt+‹key›” is
considered a dumb down? Is it because it's easy to understand?
Is it your opinion, that emacs should remain difficult to use for the
sake of difficult to use?
> > When i run my own emacs distro, info doc will be considered
> > supplementary to html/xhtml. HTML will be the primary doc format, with
> > its 1000 times more user base and tools and perhaps 10 times more
> > technically powerful and flexible.
>
> ??? HTML is much less powerful than Info. Viewing info within Emacs,
> you've got all the power of Emacs, and many useful viewing commands - on
> top of that, info is all text, so it displays instantly, in contrast to
> stuff in a web brower, which takes a noticeable time to render.
>
> In fact, info is so far ahead of html that if some researcher from a
> foreign planet were do descend on Earth and compare the two formats, he'd
> think that html arrived first, then info developed from it. In fact, it
> was more the other way around.
>
> Html is ghastly for reading manuals.
Great courage in start trolling. :)
If you would, start a new thread, then i'll discuss my reasons about
HTML vs info. Lets try to keep this thread on just the shortcut
notation issue please.
> > But likely the html will still be generated by texinfo. Doc in info
> > format will still be used i think, since it's a beautiful plain text
> > hyperlink doc system. (ok, i'm allowed to have some wild future vision
> > here...)
> > PS one element that came to me i missed in the discussion of the labor
> > of using the â~@~\Alt+â~@¹keyâ~@ºâ~@~] notation ....
>
> Yes,Xah, that garbage is what your squiggles look like on a terminal
> which isn't equipped with squiggle filters. "Feel free" to stop dumping
> such garbage on English language fora, please.
Hum? You don't have the right font installed or something? My post
should be in unicode with utf8 encoding.
You can read them correctly using google group, e.g.
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/topics
> > .... in emacs is that the notation should also show in menus, of
> > course. (as opposed to just changing the info doc) I haven't looked at
> > coding menus in elisp... would it be just change one source code
> > location for keybinding display and all menus of every mode will
> > display using the ???Alt+???key?????? notation?
>
> There are people who already use alt-key combinations in Emacs - the alt
> key is not the same as the meta key. You're going to screw them. There
> are people, not a few, who bind meta-key key sequences in their elisp
> files. Are you going to insist on them making incompatible changes, so
> that what used to be
So you are talking about customization people made to emacs?
In this thread, i suggested making the shortcut notation changes. So,
it shouldn't effect people's exiting customization.
> (global-set-key '[M-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
>
> will have to be changed to
>
> (global-set-key '[A-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
>
> ? No, you won't. What you'll actually do, once you become aware of the
> problem, is to allow the 'M' modifier to remain "for the time being", as
> a backward compatibility cludge. 10 years later, if Leeemacs is still
> around by then, that "temporary" cludge will still be there.
See above.
> And the same will hold for countless other little details you haven't
> thought through yet.
>
> On the other hand, if you were willing to get to grips with real problems
> in Emacs, you'd be most welcome to contribute.
Please refrain from wild generalizations and extraneous advice. I
don't think it is welcome. For example, you are very welcome to
contribute to me by donating money thru paypal. Use my xah @@@
xahlee.org email. It'll help my spirit in spreading more facts among
tech geekers.
=(^_^)=
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Juanma Barranquero
<thefatphi...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> IRC predates that by forever and a day.
> Phone and talk predate that by almost geological timescales.
Yes, I know. I was referring to instant message in the sense described
in this Wikipedia entry
/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging):
"Modern, Internet-wide, GUI-based messaging clients, as they are known
today, began to take off in the mid 1990s with ICQ (1996) being the
first, followed by AOL Instant Messenger (AOL Instant Messenger,
1997)."
Juanma
Juanma Barranquero
> I think it's rather silly to nick pick like that.
I was in the mood for silliness.
Juanma
William Case
On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 01:41 -0700, Xah wrote:
> On Jul 29, 12:46 am, "Juanma Barranquero" <lek...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 09:25,Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> > Instant Messaging started in 1996, with ICQ. AOL didn't buy it until 1998.
>
> Well, i was just giving out rough facts personally known to me. Not
> publishing a paper. I think it's rather silly to nick pick like that.
> You are ok i think, most tech geeker do that.
I agree; one shouldn't nick pick. But for your future reference the
expression is 'nit pick'. A nit is the egg of a louse or other small
insect.
--
Regards Bill;
Fedora 9, Gnome 2.22.3
Evo.2.22.3.1, Emacs 22.2.1
Ted Zlatanov
XL> On Jul 28, 2:31 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>> If you think the cost is 4 hours of work and none to the users, I think
>> you're disconnected from reality (or have no experience writing manuals,
>> software, and doing user support).
XL> What exactly is your reason? What exactly is your argument about my
XL> paragraph? You have to give explicit reason to disagree. You cannot
XL> simply say i'm disconnected from reality. That makes no sense. Maybe
XL> it is obvious to you. But i sincerely don't know what you are talking
XL> about.
In that case I suggest you start by making your change suggestion
through the proper channels, not in this newsgroup. I don't feel like
explaining to you basic facts about man-hours, volunteer labor, and the
hundreds of thousands of Emacs users that would deal with that change.
Again, I'm not being rude, just unwilling to spend my time explaining
all this when you don't appear to have any experience writing manuals,
software, or doing user support.
XL> And why you feel like needing to give me advice? Do you know that
XL> giving unasked advice is insulting?
I advise you to drop that line of reasoning.
XL> Can i teach you something too? The thing i want to teach is that, if
XL> you want to drop a conversation, one effective way is to start by
XL> yourself.
Agreed. Note I haven't discussed any technical issues with your change
suggestion. I've only suggested (4-5 times now) that you should submit
it through the proper channels if you want to see it happen. I'm also
answering your questions.
XL> What do you want? Why you telling me what to do?
XL> If you want me to stop using “Alt+‹key›” in my post here, then, i'm
XL> sorry, i cannot comply because you have no right.
XL> If you think that my use “Alt+‹key›” is just totally wrong in the
XL> context of emacs. Sorry, i disagree.
XL> If you want to post a warning message everytime i used “Alt+‹key›”, so
XL> that newbies understands that it is not emacs's conventional notation,
XL> that's fine.
Meta is the preferred notation, used in the Emacs manual and community.
You should use it when participating in Emacs help forums, with a
footnote about Alt. That would be most helpful to the users who have to
deal with the manual and with other helpful people who will only use
Meta in their messages. Feel free to use a big footnote, though, with a
link to your web page and whatever else you like.
I hope you'll do this. If not, you'll probably keep getting corrected
and the corrections will be increasingly harsher as people are more
annoyed with you.
Ted
Nikolaj Schumacher
> I can still say make the changes in say 1 day. Then, i have to
> subscribe to the mailing list, write explanation all over again on why
> i did this.
As opposed to ... writing explanations all over again on why someone
else should do this? :)
> one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation change is a good
> idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
Then why haven't you asked the developers, yet?
> or other reasons this change is just bad?
Sure. The current scheme works "well enough" and developer's have other
things to spend four hours on.
If the patch already existed and the side-effects were thoroughly
tested, I might support it (depending on the side-effects).
regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher
Colin S. Miller
and Unix "talk" was around in 1993 (and probably well before then).
Colin S. Miller
--
Replace the obvious in my email address with the first three letters of the hostname to reply.
Alan Mackenzie
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 05:44:10AM -0700, Xah wrote:
> On Jul 29, 4:52 am, Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> wrote:
> > Please do that! For one thing, you'll then find out just how time
> > consuming your changes will be to implement.
> there are difference between creating a fork vs the emacs team making
> the changes.
> For example, take this thread's issue of changing ... notation to ...
> in emacs manual and menu.
What, this thread whose Subject: line is "What does 'run' do in
cperl-mode?"? ;-)
> The emacs team already have a infrastructure. So, there's mailing list,
> source code depository, bug apps, ways to report bug, ways to
> incorporate change, bug fixing cycle, feature adding cycle, release
> cycle, established feature adding process or convention, etc.
> On the other hand, to create a fork, you have to basically create the
> whole infrastructure, social and technical.
Yes, you do.
> Can you see there's a huge difference in manpower needed comparing the
> two?
Yes. However, even if the infrastructure were already present for what
you want to do, it would still be a massive undertaking.
> So, for example, i claim that the shortcut notation change is just few
> hours work. Then somebody claims, if it is just few hours, why don't
> you do it and perhaps send in the diff? Well, i'm not in any sense a
> officially in gnu emacs dev team.
I am, though. I'm not in a position to speak for the rest of the Emacs
team, but I can all but guarantee that if you created a patch to replace
"meta" by "alt", it would not be accpeted. There would be a mass of
support work needed, it would cause all sorts of incompatibilities (one
already mentioned - you'll need to think up a new name for the current
"alt" modifier, and forever more field the confusion between old-alt and
new-alt), and generally foul things up for years to come, for very
questionable benefit. I think that anybody who's capable of benefitting
from Emacs is intellectually able to understand what key "M-" refers to.
> I'm not subscribed to their mailing list.
You can read the archives at
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-07/threads.html> etc.
If you do, you'll see just how much the developers care about what seem
trivial little issues in the user interface.
> Further, i'm not an experienced elisp coder as most of them are.
I would recommend you to get experienced. Like Emacs, elisp is supremely
easy to use, but unlike Emacs, it's also very easy to learn (compared
with monstrosities like C++ or Java).
> I can still say make the changes in say 1 day. Then, i have to
> subscribe to the mailing list, write explanation all over again on why
> i did this. Learn ways to put the code into their depository.
> Basically learn all the structures they are using, etc. On the other
> hand, if, say, one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation
> change is a good idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
:-) There's more to it than one developer "seeing" that it's a good
idea. There's persuading the other 15 or 20 of that goodness, in
particular the two bosses Stefan Monnier and Chong Yidong. The thread on
the mailing list would explode into a 200 post mamoth thread, at the end
of which the change would be rejected. It would cause far too much work
for far too little, if any, gain.
> The above is somewhat simplified scenario of course. Please, no need to
> nit pick. But i hope you see that there's a difference, in the manpower
> needed between GNU Emacs adopting a change, vs someone outside making
> the exact same change into GNU Emacs.
Somebody has to do the heavy manual work. It's rare indeed that anybody
on the Emacs team will see an idea and think "hey, that's great! I'll go
off and do it!". Normally the response would be "hey, that's great!
Would you code it up and submit it, please. If you need any help, drop
us an email."
> > > For one thing, it's very difficult to change GNU Emacs on issues
> > > such as these.
> > It is. The difficulties are primarily technical, not political
> > (though they're political too).
> > > The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
> > > coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did. Then, it'll wipe
> > > out emacs marketshare almost overnight. Then, the GNU Emacs people
> > > will, without any asking, seriously do all the changes, as it
> > > happened with Xemacs. (in my opinion, Xemacs is largely responsible
> > > for propelling user oriennted features we see in emacs today, took
> > > emacs about a decade to catch up.)
> > I don't think that'll happen at all. But try it - it can't do any
> > harm.
> I do thank you for the encouragement. But, i find the naysaying too
> much. Of course, it's part of discussion. But too much negative
> attitude screw progress.
There's experience behind the "negative attitude". However, if you think
I and others are wrong, you can prove us wrong by hacking your idea into
reality. The emacs-devel mailing list responds MUCH more positively to
"here's a great idea I've just implemented. Would you try it out,
please" than to "here's a great idea, would you implement it for me,
please".
> The issue in this thread here, is whether ... notation is better and
> should be adapted by emacs. I have given i hope detailed analysis:
> ... Notation vs ...
> http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
With all due respect, that article is a bit superficial. It ignores the
work which would be needed to change, and it fails to argue that the
change is important enough to be worth even a small amount of work. It
seems more to be arguing that if we were starting from scratch, the term
"alt" would be the better one. I agree with that.
> and answered all replies. However, many of this replies simply are not
> about facts of the subject but just naysays.
:-) You mean, a reply which supports your idea is "factual", and one
which opposes it is not. ;-)
> Somebody says this is not the proper place, will never work, AOL IM was
> ICQ, suggesting how i should do it, advices on how fork should be done,
> that i'm off from reality, etc.
> In general, lots of pure naysays.
Including from me. There's a lot of experience and good judgement behind
these negative posts.
> The reason i gave, about why ... is better, is summarized like this:
> Universally understood
> Notation Same as Key Label
> Meta is Alt in practice
> Keyboards don't have Meta key today
> Can you point out, if any of these points are wrong, or other reasons
> this change is just bad?
Yes, and I already have done in this thread and probably before. Let me
repeat myself: it would be far too much work to be worthwhile, and it
wouldn't solve a problem, because nobody gets confused more than
momentarily by the term "meta" anyway.
> You say it takes too much time to implement. How so?
I think I've explained this several times alreay. Let me try again.
This change, even if it could be achieved in a few hours' hacking would
cause incompatibilities in existing code, and confusion between the
existing "alt" modifier (used by a tiny number of people) and the renamed
"meta". Immediately after the change there would be weeks of code not
working, because hackers would continue to write "\M-", "\C-\M-", etc.,
which would now be incorrect.
> emacs manual is in info format, which is generated by texinfo. The
> source code is one or more plain files. As such, it can be done with
> the various find/replace commands in emacs, interactively or with
> regex.
You would have to write a new section detailing your (not yet specified)
backward compatibility features. Hackers _hate_ that sort of thing.
They dissipate effort for no reason.
> I mentioned, there's another thing is changing how the shortcut ....
Correction: "key sequence".
> ... is displayed in the menu. I'm not a elisp expert (in comparison to
> emacs developers), and i haven't looked at how this can be done. I'm
> thinking there's just one place we can change and all mode's menu will
> show shortcuts using the ... or ... notation. Is this true?
No, there would be lots of places to change. All the places which handle
key sequences have pretty much hard-coded values: For example, each
modifier is represented by a bit in a key-code: "M-" is b27, "C-" is b26,
"S-" (shift) is b25, "H-" (hyper) is b24, "s-" (super) is b23, "A-" (alt)
is b22. Have a look at the function `event-apply-modifier' in simple.el
in the Emacs source to get an idea.
> > > So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> > > modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> > > own emacs distro. The actually coding part for the latter will prob
> > > be dwarfed by all the associated tasks of running a website with
> > > public annoucement and communities etc.
> > The problem is that what you think of as "modernisation", others see
> > as "dumbing down".
> Well, yeah, i know about that and mentioned it a few times in this
> thread. But why is it dumb down? In what way it dumbed down? Let's
> focus on facts and specifics. Why is the notation ... is considered a
> dumb down? Is it because it's easy to understand?
The notation "alt-", of itself, is fine. The notation "meta-" is
marginally less fine. Your desire to change from "meta-" to "alt-"
posits dumb users for whom dumbing down is necessary or, at best, very
helpful.
> Is it your opinion, that emacs should remain difficult to use for the
> sake of difficult to use?
My opinion is that emacs is supremely easy to use and should remain so;
that emacs acheives this ease of use partly at the cost of being
difficult to learn, and that this is a good tradeoff; that changing from
"meta" to "alt" would achieve a vanishingly small increase in ease of
learning, no increase in ease of use, and a massive amount of pain for
those forced to switch usage.
[ .... ]
> > Html is ghastly for reading manuals.
> Great courage in start trolling. :)
> If you would, start a new thread, then i'll discuss my reasons about
> HTML vs info. Lets try to keep this thread on just the shortcut ....
Correction: "key sequence"
> .... notation issue please.
What, the thread called "What does 'run' do in cperl-mode?"? ;-)
> > > But likely the html will still be generated by texinfo. Doc in info
> > > format will still be used i think, since it's a beautiful plain text
> > > hyperlink doc system. (ok, i'm allowed to have some wild future vision
> > > here...)
> > > PS one element that came to me i missed in the discussion of the labor
> > > of using the â~@~\Alt+â~@ıkeyâ~@şâ~@~] notation ....
> > Yes,Xah, that garbage is what your squiggles look like on a terminal
> > which isn't equipped with squiggle filters. "Feel free" to stop dumping
> > such garbage on English language fora, please.
> Hum? You don't have the right font installed or something? My post
> should be in unicode with utf8 encoding.
It might well be. And I'm not wasting my time with stupid international
character codes any more than I'm going to waste my time with MS-Word for
reading files.doc. UTF has its place, but it's suboptimal in the extreme
for representing monolingual English. If you want to piss off as many
people as possible, just carry on putting stupid multibyte characters
into your posts. Nobody would have any objection to your UTF8 if you
restricted yourself to those characters also in ASCII.
> You can read them correctly using google group, e.g.
> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/topics
This is a mailing list/newsgroup. It would be far better if you wrote
your articles courteously.
> > > .... in emacs is that the notation should also show in menus, of
> > > course. (as opposed to just changing the info doc) I haven't looked
> > > at coding menus in elisp... would it be just change one source
> > > code location for keybinding display and all menus of every mode
> > > will display using the ???Alt+???key?????? notation?
> > There are people who already use alt-key combinations in Emacs - the
> > alt key is not the same as the meta key. You're going to screw them.
> > There are people, not a few, who bind meta-key key sequences in their
> > elisp files. Are you going to insist on them making incompatible
> > changes, so that what used to be
> So you are talking about customization people made to emacs?
Of course. Customisations and extensions.
> In this thread, i suggested making the shortcut ....
Correction: "key sequence".
> .... notation changes. So, it shouldn't effect people's exiting
> customization.
Do you mean customisation on the way out, or do you mean "exciting"
customisation, such as is done by me? ;-)
> > (global-set-key '[M-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
> > will have to be changed to
> > (global-set-key '[A-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
> > ? No, you won't. What you'll actually do, once you become aware of the
> > problem, is to allow the 'M' modifier to remain "for the time being", as
> > a backward compatibility cludge. 10 years later, if Leeemacs is still
> > around by then, that "temporary" cludge will still be there.
> See above.
If you want to implement your idea, you'll have to decide how to solve
the problem of what to do about existing key sequences which use the
(existing) alt modifier. Writing "see above" doesn't cut it, any more
than writing "PTO"[*] on both sides of a piece of paper would retain your
interest for very long.
[*] "PTO" = "please turn over".
> > And the same will hold for countless other little details you haven't
> > thought through yet.
> > On the other hand, if you were willing to get to grips with real
> > problems in Emacs, you'd be most welcome to contribute.
> Please refrain from wild generalizations and extraneous advice. I
> don't think it is welcome.
OK. But I will give you this advice: get thoroughly proficient in elisp
before embarking on your "meta" to "alt" project. It will save you a lot
of pain.
> For example, you are very welcome to contribute to me by donating money
> thru paypal. Use my xah @@@ xahlee.org email. It'll help my spirit in
> spreading more facts among tech geekers.
Hey, that's good. :-)
Eli Zaretskii
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:25:21 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On Jul 28, 8:32 pm, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
> > > From:XahLee<x...@xahlee.org>
> > > Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:54:35 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> > > After all, many emacs developers read here i was told.
> >
> > Most of them don't, actually. Whoever told you otherwise was wrong.
>
>
> thanks for setting this correct.
>
> ... wait, but it was you who told me so here few months back i think.
Can't be, you are either confusing me with someone else, or you
misunderstood what I said back then.
> Remember, in my article
>
> “Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
> http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
>
> The main reasons i gave are:
>
> • Universally understood
So is Meta.
> • Identical To Key's Label
Only on some keyboards.
> • Meta is Alt in practice
Only on some keyboards.
> • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
Yes, they do, at least some of them.
> So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
> emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
> become obsolete.
You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
it was marked with a diamond.
> As i mentioned, the computing industry changes relative fast.
So is Emacs. There are hundreds of lines of code that get committed
each day into the Emacs repository.
> Oh, another point i wanted to make before, was that OpenSource
> software often takes a 5 to 10 years lag of adopting features from the
> commercial wold.
With Emacs, it's actually the other way around: it got many features
waaay before the rest of the world.
> Syntax coloring, for example, i think by 1995 is in every commercial
> software. (when did it came to emacs?)
In July 1993.
> Mouse support...
1985
> Font ...
Hard to tell, but looks like 1992 at the latest (I'm quite sure it was
much earlier, but cannot find evidence in the few free moments I have
now).
> Unicode ...
2000
> GUI support ...
1985
> I'm actually don't have solid historical facts for the above points as
> i liked...
Oh, but you should, perhaps. Then you might see that some of your
opinions have no factual basis at all, as far as Emacs is concerned.
> but anyway i just want to write instead of like doing 10
> years of research and post 1 article and got overflooded.
No need for that: I looked up the above in less than a minute of
grepping Emacs ChangeLog files.
> So back to emacs.... there was CUA mode. I don't know the history of
> the mode, but it is my guess that mode has been floating out there for
> quite some time before it is part of emacs. I think there must be huge
> resistance back then, even today, the use of it is somewhat
> controversial, and geekers are shy to admit they use it because that
> somehow makes them “Microsoft Kiddies”.
You are wrong. As long as a mode is optional, there's normally no
resistance at all (assuming that it's written cleanly and according to
Emacs coding style and standards).
> The other point is that if you research the adaption of GUI features
> or practices in commercial and free software world, you'll see that
> the free camp is rather slow in 5 to 10 years.
Like I said: get your history right first, then I will perhaps
consider taking seriously your claims. For now, it's just bla-bla
that's not based on anything except itself.
> Emacs in fact is a good example. Nobody uses it.
Yeah, right. That'd be a very LARGE nobody.
> lol.
Same here.
> alright, i typed fast. this post is maybe 50 min but now it flies out
> sans cleanup. I have written much better about all these points
> actually, but citing my website gets tired and ignored. Better answer
> question on person to person basis, is what am trying to do.
I hope the ratio of your lines to mine will not be so large next time,
though, or else I'd need to cut my losses and stop. I will never have
enough time even to read everything you managed to dump on me in
response to just 11 lines.
Joost Diepenmaat
>> From: Xah <xah...@gmail.com>
>> Emacs in fact is a good example. Nobody uses it.
>
> Yeah, right. That'd be a very LARGE nobody.
I resent that remark :-)
--
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/
Xah
> > “Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
> > http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
>
> > The main reasons i gave are:
>
> > • Universally understood
>
> So is Meta.
Huh? Are you out of your mind Eli?
this can be easily verified though. Go stand on a street in downtown.
Ask random people on the street “hi. I'm doing a survey. Please check
mark one of the following: □ I know what's a Meta key on computing. □
I know what's Alt key in computing.”
> > • Identical To Key's Label
>
> Only on some keyboards.
Huh? Are you serious or are you joking??
I have a keyboard gallery here:
http://xahlee.org/emacs/keyboards.html
which includes several picts of different PC keyboards.
you can see that they all have a key with Alt printed on them.
> > • Meta is Alt in practice
>
> Only on some keyboards.
Huh? I'm talking about Emacs's default binding for emacs running in
major OSes (Windows, OSX, Linux). On Windows and Linux it's Alt. On
Apple computers in OSX with Apple's keyboard, it's Alt in Aquamac, Cmd
in Carbon Emacs.
What do you mean by “Only on some keyboards.”?
Did you actually read my explanation? «By default on all major OSes in
use (Windows and Linux and OSX), emacs maps its Meta to Alt key. So,
practically speaking, the Meta key is the Alt key. (Aquamacs, perhaps
the most widely used emacs distro on OSX, by default has Alt for
Meta.)»
> > • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
>
> Yes, they do, at least some of them.
Did you read what i wrote? I think i repeated it in this thread at
least 5 times. Here's what i wrote:
«The Meta key was one of the modifier key on obsolete keyboards used
by lisp machines in the 1980s. (for photos and detail, see: Why
Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful)
There is practically no keyboard today that has the Meta key. Sun
Microsystem's keyboard has a key labeled with a diamond “◆”. Sun's
official documentation refers to this key as Meta key. (e.g. search
http://docs.sun.com/ on “Meta key”.) Sun's keyboards have a market
share perhaps less than 0.01%.
For photos and more commentary on Sun's keyboard, see Computer
keyboards Gallery.»
This is posted in the very beginning of the thread.
> > So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
> > emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
> > become obsolete.
>
> You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
> it was marked with a diamond.
Are you saying, that the Sun Microsystem's keyboard precedes Lisp
Machine's keyboard?
Do you have any detail, reference at all?
Eli, it's not just about words mentioned in changelog files.
> > So back to emacs.... there was CUA mode. I don't know the history of
> > the mode, but it is my guess that mode has been floating out there for
> > quite some time before it is part of emacs. I think there must be huge
> > resistance back then, even today, the use of it is somewhat
> > controversial, and geekers are shy to admit they use it because that
> > somehow makes them “Microsoft Kiddies”.
>
> You are wrong. As long as a mode is optional, there's normally no
> resistance at all (assuming that it's written cleanly and according to
> Emacs coding style and standards).
So? what is your point?
> > The other point is that if you research the adaption of GUI features
> > or practices in commercial and free software world, you'll see that
> > the free camp is rather slow in 5 to 10 years.
>
> Like I said: get your history right first, then I will perhaps
> consider taking seriously your claims. For now, it's just bla-bla
> that's not based on anything except itself.
>
> > Emacs in fact is a good example. Nobody uses it.
>
> Yeah, right. That'd be a very LARGE nobody.
>
> > lol.
>
> Same here.
>
> > alright, i typed fast. this post is maybe 50 min but now it flies out
> > sans cleanup. I have written much better about all these points
> > actually, but citing my website gets tired and ignored. Better answer
> > question on person to person basis, is what am trying to do.
>
> I hope the ratio of your lines to mine will not be so large next time,
> though, or else I'd need to cut my losses and stop. I will never have
> enough time even to read everything you managed to dump on me in
> response to just 11 lines.
Let's not start slurs ok?
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
> Xah <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I can still say make the changes in say 1 day. Then, i have to
> > subscribe to the mailing list, write explanation all over again on why
> > i did this.
>
> As opposed to ... writing explanations all over again on why someone
> else should do this? :)
>
> > one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation change is a good
> > idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
>
> Then why haven't you asked the developers, yet?
That takes time and energy.
You sound like it is my duty or something i should've done.
Strongly believing that “Alt+‹key›” notation is better for emacs does
not mean i must ask GNU Emacs developers. Asking someone to do
something for me is a step of social or interpersonal relation. Asking
is not “free”. For example, if you stand on the street and ask people
to give you money. That has ramifications on your reputation or who
you are. Also, if you get denied repeatedly, it might hurt your
feelings.
> > or other reasons this change is just bad?
>
> Sure. The current scheme works "well enough" and developer's have other
> things to spend four hours on.
That's a good point.
I do think that this shortcut notation change is trivial enough, yet
benefit is huge enough, that it should be done as priority.
We discussed about the time required for this. I think it's 4 hours or
so. As for the benefit, i think it's huge, because it fixed one of the
usability problems of emacs.
> If the patch already existed and the side-effects were thoroughly
> tested, I might support it (depending on the side-effects).
Be positive Nik.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
David Kastrup
> I hope you are not suggesting that my suggestions are totally fringe
> thus needs to see the light to be proven. (after all my effort in
> explation here)
A nice portmanteau for "explanation" and "expletive".
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
Andreas Eder
>>>>> "Xah" == Xah <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
Xah> I don't see my suggestion for emacs to adapt the “Alt+‹key›” notation
Xah> should be classified as a “feature”. Between Feature and Bug, i'd say
Xah> it's a bug, if forced.
Xah> Remember, in my article
Xah> “Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
Xah> http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
Xah> The main reasons i gave are:
Xah> • Universally understood
Xah> • Identical To Key's Label
Xah> • Meta is Alt in practice
Xah> • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
But this just plain wrong! My Alt key does *not* generate Meta but
Alt (what a surprise) and I have a different key that generates
Meta. Meta is not Alt, not even in practice.
'Andreas
--
ceterum censeo redmondinem esse delendam.
Xah
> Yes. However, even if the infrastructure were already present for what
> you want to do, it would still be a massive undertaking.
>
> > So, for example, i claim that the shortcut notation change is just few
> > hours work. Then somebody claims, if it is just few hours, why don't
> > you do it and perhaps send in the diff? Well, i'm not in any sense a
> > officially in gnu emacs dev team.
>
> I am, though. I'm not in a position to speak for the rest of the Emacs
> team, but I can all but guarantee that if you created a patch to replace
> "meta" by "alt", it would not be accpeted. There would be a mass of
> support work needed, it would cause all sorts of incompatibilities (one
> already mentioned - you'll need to think up a new name for the current
> "alt" modifier, and forever more field the confusion between old-alt and
> new-alt), and generally foul things up for years to come, for very
> questionable benefit. I think that anybody who's capable of benefitting
> from Emacs is intellectually able to understand what key "M-" refers to.
Let's get clear on exactly what is the proposed change.
(1) change all notations of M-key and C-key in emacs manual to Alt+key
and Ctrl+key notation. Just to be more precise, the source of emacs
manual is the texinfo source code, which are plain file. It generates
the info files.
(2) change somewhere in elisp source code, so that menu show shortcuts
with the Alt+ and Ctrl+ notation.
Note that elisp keymacro isn't in the proposed change, nor that elisp
function such as “kbd”.
> > I'm not subscribed to their mailing list.
>
> You can read the archives at
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-07/threads.html> etc.
> If you do, you'll see just how much the developers care about what seem
> trivial little issues in the user interface.
FYI, i'm aware, and have read it sometimes now and then this year.
> > Further, i'm not an experienced elisp coder as most of them are.
>
> I would recommend you to get experienced. Like Emacs, elisp is supremely
> easy to use, but unlike Emacs, it's also very easy to learn (compared
> with monstrosities like C++ or Java).
Alan, don't start, ok? :)
(I'm no newbie and you knew. I started computer programing in ~1993,
started paid programing job in 1995...)
> > I can still say make the changes in say 1 day. Then, i have to
> > subscribe to the mailing list, write explanation all over again on why
> > i did this. Learn ways to put the code into their depository.
> > Basically learn all the structures they are using, etc. On the other
> > hand, if, say, one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation
> > change is a good idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
>
> :-) There's more to it than one developer "seeing" that it's a good
> idea. There's persuading the other 15 or 20 of that goodness, in
> particular the two bosses Stefan Monnier and Chong Yidong. The thread on
> the mailing list would explode into a 200 post mamoth thread, at the end
> of which the change would be rejected. It would cause far too much work
> for far too little, if any, gain.
in dedicated mailing list, people would be more careful. Arguably on
emacs's dev list it'll still have a lot arguments... but i think it's
a good thing, in fact part of the list's goal, of exchange opinions,
even if at the end it is rejected. Some idea needs to start somewhere.
I'm sure there are initially rejected ideas that later become part of
emacs.
> > The above is somewhat simplified scenario of course. Please, no need to
> > nit pick. But i hope you see that there's a difference, in the manpower
> > needed between GNU Emacs adopting a change, vs someone outside making
> > the exact same change into GNU Emacs.
>
> Somebody has to do the heavy manual work. It's rare indeed that anybody
> on the Emacs team will see an idea and think "hey, that's great! I'll go
> off and do it!". Normally the response would be "hey, that's great!
> Would you code it up and submit it, please. If you need any help, drop
> us an email."
Thank you.
As of now, i'm not sure i want to initiate the processing of actually
sending in code to GNU org for many social reasons. I don't mean to be
superficially mysterious... but for one thing, some (or perhaps
several) people don't necessarily like me due to my newsgroup posts.
Also, i'm not sure i want to be part of FSF or GNU. Sure i support
their ideas in general, but the OpenSource or FreeSoftware fervor
sometimes i cannot take as good to society.
> > > > For one thing, it's very difficult to change GNU Emacs on issues
> > > > such as these.
> > > It is. The difficulties are primarily technical, not political
> > > (though they're political too).
> > > > The most effective way to make such change, is just have a capable
> > > > coder and fork it, like Xemacs and Aquamacs did. Then, it'll wipe
> > > > out emacs marketshare almost overnight. Then, the GNU Emacs people
> > > > will, without any asking, seriously do all the changes, as it
> > > > happened with Xemacs. (in my opinion, Xemacs is largely responsible
> > > > for propelling user oriennted features we see in emacs today, took
> > > > emacs about a decade to catch up.)
> > > I don't think that'll happen at all. But try it - it can't do any
> > > harm.
> > I do thank you for the encouragement. But, i find the naysaying too
> > much. Of course, it's part of discussion. But too much negative
> > attitude screw progress.
>
> There's experience behind the "negative attitude". However, if you think
> I and others are wrong, you can prove us wrong by hacking your idea into
> reality. The emacs-devel mailing list responds MUCH more positively to
> "here's a great idea I've just implemented. Would you try it out,
> please" than to "here's a great idea, would you implement it for me,
> please".
Good point.
> > The issue in this thread here, is whether ... notation is better and
> > should be adapted by emacs. I have given i hope detailed analysis:
> > ... Notation vs ...
> >http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
>
> With all due respect, that article is a bit superficial. It ignores the
> work which would be needed to change, and it fails to argue that the
> change is important enough to be worth even a small amount of work. It
> seems more to be arguing that if we were starting from scratch, the term
> "alt" would be the better one. I agree with that.
well as mentioned before... i'm just thinking about the change in the
manual, and the change in shortcut notation that shows up in menus. No
change proposed for macros or any elisp function. I think that's more
of what you are thinking.
I do think the change is important, because it makes emacs easier to
use. The difficulty to start using emacs is one of the most cited
criticism of emacs.
> > and answered all replies. However, many of this replies simply are not
> > about facts of the subject but just naysays.
>
> :-) You mean, a reply which supports your idea is "factual", and one
> which opposes it is not. ;-)
>
> > Somebody says this is not the proper place, will never work, AOL IM was
> > ICQ, suggesting how i should do it, advices on how fork should be done,
> > that i'm off from reality, etc.
> > In general, lots of pure naysays.
>
> Including from me. There's a lot of experience and good judgement behind
> these negative posts.
You are exagerrating i think. Ok maybe you are not.
The thing is, as i learned more in responding to people in this
thread, that some issue you just have to talk it out in detail. There
are a lot misunderstanding.
In the very beginning, i would simply think those who disagree with me
on this are just some patent idiots or who just want to play with me.
I'm sure many think the very fact i suggest the use of the Alt+
notation makes me a “troll”. But i think there's large room to
discuss.
> > The reason i gave, about why ... is better, is summarized like this:
> > Universally understood
> > Notation Same as Key Label
> > Meta is Alt in practice
> > Keyboards don't have Meta key today
> > Can you point out, if any of these points are wrong, or other reasons
> > this change is just bad?
>
> Yes, and I already have done in this thread and probably before. Let me
In last post, you mentioned some side effect of breaking customization
lisp codes. But i hope to clarify here, that no lisp code change is
proposed other than getting menus to display the new notation.
I think that's your main point, but i couldn't think of other major
points you are arguing against?
> repeat myself: it would be far too much work to be worthwhile, and it
> wouldn't solve a problem, because nobody gets confused more than
> momentarily by the term "meta" anyway.
I think it's rather major confusion.
we have to look at in a social way. Sure, tech geeker may say that any
who can't understand a name alias is a idiot and not fit to use emacs.
That's rather a bad attitude and most of the time not seriously said.
software needs to be easy to use. Those not easy to use just become
less and less popular and eventually obsolete. Emacs has dwindling
user base.
> > You say it takes too much time to implement. How so?
>
> I think I've explained this several times alreay.
I honestly haven't seen you explained it in any tech way, other than
once in your last post.
> Let me try again.
> This change, even if it could be achieved in a few hours' hacking would
> cause incompatibilities in existing code,
Note that no change in elisp code is involved, other than the one to
make the menu show the new notation.
All existing elisp code should behave as is.
> and confusion between the
> existing "alt" modifier (used by a tiny number of people) and the renamed
> "meta". Immediately after the change there would be weeks of code not
> working, because hackers would continue to write "\M-", "\C-\M-", etc.,
> which would now be incorrect.
Again, Alan, you kept reading more into it. There is no suggestion to
change elisp's macro syntax. Sorry if i wasn't clear or seems to imply
that.
No, no change on lisp's key macro syntax. Ok, so the manual and menu
would show Alt+, but the keyboard macro and lisp code would show M-.
One may say this further causes confusion... yes but i think it is
better still than the current situation. Also, emacs already has huge
number of terminologies incompatible with today's...
the bottom line is, for anyone who actually gets down to reading or
wrtiing lisp , as the tech geeker would say: If you can't tell that M-
is just a syntax notation for the Alt key, then you perhaps shouldn't
code lisp.
Ideally, we would like to change the macro... but due to existing code
it's rather too much work. (that's what you are thinking) Also, the
issue gets complex since emacs already has the alt key idea from the
lisp machine keyboard's Alt Mode key... represented in kbd macro as
"A-", but isn't used today...
> > emacs manual is in info format, which is generated by texinfo. The
> > source code is one or more plain files. As such, it can be done with
> > the various find/replace commands in emacs, interactively or with
> > regex.
>
> You would have to write a new section detailing your (not yet specified)
> backward compatibility features. Hackers _hate_ that sort of thing.
> They dissipate effort for no reason.
again, see above. There's no proposal to change keyboard macro syntax.
> > I mentioned, there's another thing is changing how the shortcut ....
>
> Correction: "key sequence".
note i'm aware that "key sequence" is preferred emacs term for
keyboard combination or sequential pressing of keys to invoke a
command.
> > ... is displayed in the menu. I'm not a elisp expert (in comparison to
> > emacs developers), and i haven't looked at how this can be done. I'm
> > thinking there's just one place we can change and all mode's menu will
> > show shortcuts using the ... or ... notation. Is this true?
>
> No, there would be lots of places to change. All the places which handle
> key sequences have pretty much hard-coded values: For example, each
> modifier is represented by a bit in a key-code: "M-" is b27, "C-" is b26,
> "S-" (shift) is b25, "H-" (hyper) is b24, "s-" (super) is b23, "A-" (alt)
> is b22. Have a look at the function `event-apply-modifier' in simple.el
> in the Emacs source to get an idea.
Again, i'm not suggesting change to kbd macro syntax. Somehow you have
this thought in mind firmly. Nowhere i implied such kbd macro syntax
Alan. Come on.
It remains the question: what source code one needs to change so that
all menu shows the Alt+ and Ctrl+ notation?
> > > > So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> > > > modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> > > > own emacs distro. The actually coding part for the latter will prob
> > > > be dwarfed by all the associated tasks of running a website with
> > > > public annoucement and communities etc.
> > > The problem is that what you think of as "modernisation", others see
> > > as "dumbing down".
> > Well, yeah, i know about that and mentioned it a few times in this
> > thread. But why is it dumb down? In what way it dumbed down? Let's
> > focus on facts and specifics. Why is the notation ... is considered a
> > dumb down? Is it because it's easy to understand?
>
> The notation "alt-", of itself, is fine. The notation "meta-" is
> marginally less fine. Your desire to change from "meta-" to "alt-"
> posits dumb users for whom dumbing down is necessary or, at best, very
> helpful.
That's a bad way to look at things. Software needs to be easy to use.
As a metric to judge this quality, the more dumber people who can use
it, the better is the ease of use quality of the software.
> > Is it your opinion, that emacs should remain difficult to use for the
> > sake of difficult to use?
>
> My opinion is that emacs is supremely easy to use and should remain so;
> that emacs acheives this ease of use partly at the cost of being
> difficult to learn, and that this is a good tradeoff; that changing from
> "meta" to "alt" would achieve a vanishingly small increase in ease of
> learning, no increase in ease of use, and a massive amount of pain for
> those forced to switch usage.
Alright, i guess we disagree.
You might know already, that i also think emacs is the best text
editor and much more, despite some usabilitie issues on outset. If i
didn't think emacs is so great, i wouldn't have spent so much energy
arguing here. Also, i wrote a emacs and elisp tutorial from a
practical user's point of view. Many people liked my tutorial. For
exmaple, it is linked in blogs, e.g. http://del.icio.us/url/c17bb01889fd1af321d585fe6fa3ec25
. Just to be sure, i also think emacs has great consistency, most
clear and comprehensive doc, far more so than most any software
apps...
one example related i like to cite, is the usability of linux. In your
stance, perhaps you think KDE/Gnome or Lindows is dumbing down? The
very notion and phrase of dumbing down is bad Alan.
> [ .... ]
>
> > > Html is ghastly for reading manuals.
> > Great courage in start trolling. :)
> > If you would, start a new thread, then i'll discuss my reasons about
> > HTML vs info. Lets try to keep this thread on just the shortcut ....
>
> Correction: "key sequence"
>
> > .... notation issue please.
>
> What, the thread called "What does 'run' do in cperl-mode?"? ;-)
>
> > > > But likely the html will still be generated by texinfo. Doc in info
> > > > format will still be used i think, since it's a beautiful plain text
> > > > hyperlink doc system. (ok, i'm allowed to have some wild future vision
> > > > here...)
> > > > PS one element that came to me i missed in the discussion of the labor
> > > > of using the â~@~\Alt+â~@¹keyâ~@ºâ~@~] notation ....
> > > Yes,Xah, that garbage is what your squiggles look like on a terminal
> > > which isn't equipped with squiggle filters. "Feel free" to stop dumping
> > > such garbage on English language fora, please.
> > Hum? You don't have the right font installed or something? My post
> > should be in unicode with utf8 encoding.
>
> It might well be. And I'm not wasting my time with stupid international
> character codes any more than I'm going to waste my time with MS-Word for
> reading files.doc. UTF has its place, but it's suboptimal in the extreme
> for representing monolingual English. If you want to piss off as many
> people as possible, just carry on putting stupid multibyte characters
> into your posts. Nobody would have any objection to your UTF8 if you
> restricted yourself to those characters also in ASCII.
I don't think you are being reasonable. today, even hardcore tech
geekers prefers unicode. Even in plain English, ascii is not as good
since it doesn't have curly quotes and other symbols such as lambda.
> > You can read them correctly using google group, e.g.
> >http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/topics
>
> This is a mailing list/newsgroup. It would be far better if you wrote
> your articles courteously.
In gnu.emacs.help at least, i don't think i have flamed much. In
particular in this thread, i tried to be more normal and courteous.
> > > > .... in emacs is that the notation should also show in menus, of
> > > > course. (as opposed to just changing the info doc) I haven't looked
> > > > at coding menus in elisp... would it be just change one source
> > > > code location for keybinding display and all menus of every mode
> > > > will display using the ???Alt+???key?????? notation?
> > > There are people who already use alt-key combinations in Emacs - the
> > > alt key is not the same as the meta key. You're going to screw them.
> > > There are people, not a few, who bind meta-key key sequences in their
> > > elisp files. Are you going to insist on them making incompatible
> > > changes, so that what used to be
> > So you are talking about customization people made to emacs?
>
> Of course. Customisations and extensions.
Yes. Please keep in mind the change is for the manual and menu. Not
lisp kbd macro syntax.
> > In this thread, i suggested making the shortcut ....
>
> Correction: "key sequence".
>
> > .... notation changes. So, it shouldn't effect people's exiting
> > customization.
>
> Do you mean customisation on the way out, or do you mean "exciting"
> customisation, such as is done by me? ;-)
(^_^) ... not sure i got the joke.
> > > (global-set-key '[M-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
> > > will have to be changed to
> > > (global-set-key '[A-insertchar] 'show-debug-string)
> > > ? No, you won't. What you'll actually do, once you become aware of the
> > > problem, is to allow the 'M' modifier to remain "for the time being", as
> > > a backward compatibility cludge. 10 years later, if Leeemacs is still
> > > around by then, that "temporary" cludge will still be there.
> > See above.
>
> If you want to implement your idea, you'll have to decide how to solve
> the problem of what to do about existing key sequences which use the
> (existing) alt modifier. Writing "see above" doesn't cut it, any more
> than writing "PTO"[*] on both sides of a piece of paper would retain your
> interest for very long.
>
> [*] "PTO" = "please turn over".
Again, i'm thinking just change in the manual and menu's notation for
shortcuts.
The need to change kbd macro syntax so that it become consistent with
the suggestion, is good. But that gets hairy, as you explained. So the
issue now, is wheher this change creates inconsistecy. In my opinion,
no, because to be strict, emacs is already inconsistant by keep using
a key name on lisp machine's keyboards that practically didn't exist
anymore.
One interesting point is that, on lisp machine's keyboard, it also has
a Alt key, labeled ALT MODE. In emacs's keyboard macro syntax, this is
written as "A-". So, when lisp keyboard went out and PC keyboard in,
emacs possibly might have made a better fix by changing using this Alt
key instead of Meta, instead of just mapping Meta to PC kbd's Alt. But
what exactly happened in this, why the decision back then... is
another interesting detail. My thought is that it's just part of
laziness, and other reason is that i think ALT MODE on lisp machine is
more like a mode toggle...
> > > And the same will hold for countless other little details you haven't
> > > thought through yet.
> > > On the other hand, if you were willing to get to grips with real
> > > problems in Emacs, you'd be most welcome to contribute.
> > Please refrain from wild generalizations and extraneous advice. I
> > don't think it is welcome.
>
> OK. But I will give you this advice: get thoroughly proficient in elisp
> before embarking on your "meta" to "alt" project. It will save you a lot
> of pain.
Well... thank you for this advice anyway.
> > For example, you are very welcome to contribute to me by donating money
> > thru paypal. Use my xah @@@ xahlee.org email. It'll help my spirit in
> > spreading more facts among tech geekers.
>
> Hey, that's good. :-)
>
> > Xah
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Nikolaj Schumacher
>> > one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation change is a good
>> > idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
>>
>> Then why haven't you asked the developers, yet?
>
> That takes time and energy.
I think that's a trivial copy and paste operation. Shouldn't take more
than 4 hours or so. "As for the benefit, i think it's huge, because it
fixed one of the usability problems of emacs."
> You sound like it is my duty or something i should've done.
I thought it's something you wanted to actually accomplish. That's the
way to get it done.
> Strongly believing that “Alt+‹key›” notation is better for emacs does
> not mean i must ask GNU Emacs developers.
There's a saying: If you don't vote, you don't get to complain.
regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher
Xah
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:09:06 -0700 (PDT)XahLee<x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
> XL> On Jul 28, 2:31 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>
> >> If you think the cost is 4 hours of work and none to the users, I think
> >> you're disconnected from reality (or have no experience writing manuals,
> >> software, and doing user support).
>
> XL> What exactly is your reason? What exactly is your argument about my
> XL> paragraph? You have to give explicit reason to disagree. You cannot
> XL> simply say i'm disconnected from reality. That makes no sense. Maybe
> XL> it is obvious to you. But i sincerely don't know what you are talking
> XL> about.
>
> In that case I suggest you start by making your change suggestion
> through the proper channels, not in this newsgroup. I don't feel like
> explaining to you basic facts about man-hours, volunteer labor, and the
> hundreds of thousands of Emacs users that would deal with that change.
> Again, I'm not being rude, just unwilling to spend my time explaining
> all this when you don't appear to have any experience writing manuals,
> software, or doing user support.
Can you keep to topic instead giving me extraneous advice?
For example, i suggest you more books about philosophy, critical
thinking. I don't mean to be rude, but really, reading those books
will help you discuss more fruitfully, even if you don't have real
world experience working in a large software project.
You may think this is a jab. But no, i do think that way just as you
perhaps earnest in thinking i lack experience in writing manuals.
Do you wish to compare our credentials? Is that what this comes down
to?
> XL> And why you feel like needing to give me advice? Do you know that
> XL> giving unasked advice is insulting?
>
> I advise you to drop that line of reasoning.
>
> XL> Can i teach you something too? The thing i want to teach is that, if
> XL> you want to drop a conversation, one effective way is to start by
> XL> yourself.
>
> Agreed. Note I haven't discussed any technical issues with your change
> suggestion. I've only suggested (4-5 times now) that you should submit
> it through the proper channels if you want to see it happen. I'm also
> answering your questions.
Stop telling me whats the proper channel. You began this conversation.
The proper channel for telling me my use of Alt-‹key› is wrong then
perhaps is email.
> XL> What do you want? Why you telling me what to do?
>
> XL> If you want me to stop using “Alt+‹key›” in my post here, then, i'm
> XL> sorry, i cannot comply because you have no right.
>
> XL> If you think that my use “Alt+‹key›” is just totally wrong in the
> XL> context of emacs. Sorry, i disagree.
>
> XL> If you want to post a warning message everytime i used “Alt+‹key›”, so
> XL> that newbies understands that it is not emacs's conventional notation,
> XL> that's fine.
>
> Meta is the preferred notation, used in the Emacs manual and community.
> You should use it when participating in Emacs help forums, with a
> footnote about Alt. That would be most helpful to the users who have to
> deal with the manual and with other helpful people who will only use
> Meta in their messages. Feel free to use a big footnote, though, with a
> link to your web page and whatever else you like.
Sorry, as i said, i dont agree. I have given a lot detailed
explanations on why.
> I hope you'll do this. If not, you'll probably keep getting corrected
> and the corrections will be increasingly harsher as people are more
> annoyed with you.
You are fine to express your opinions. If they get annoyed by my
opinion, or gets harsh on me, that's ok. I'm used to express
unorthodox opinions and used to the reactions. I tried to be civil at
least in this thread.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
> Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > one of the developer saw that the shortcut notation change is a good
> >> > idea, he can then spend 4 hours and commit.
>
> >> Then why haven't you asked the developers, yet?
>
> > That takes time and energy.
>
> I think that's a trivial copy and paste operation. Shouldn't take more
> than 4 hours or so. "As for the benefit, i think it's huge, because it
> fixed one of the usability problems of emacs."
I have gave reasons that asking someone else to do something involves
issues of social relation. I gave the example of standing on the
street and asking people for money. The time and energy, to go to the
street and open your mouth, is perhaps 10 minunes or 10 calories. But
it has ramifications on you, regardless whether you got the money or
not.
Please don't just pick parts of post.
Maybe you are doing it just to annoy me? Don't. The joke is rather
old.
> > You sound like it is my duty or something i should've done.
>
> I thought it's something you wanted to actually accomplish. That's the
> way to get it done.
>
> > Strongly believing that “Alt+‹key›” notation is better for emacs does
> > not mean i must ask GNU Emacs developers.
>
> There's a saying: If you don't vote, you don't get to complain.
Vote for me then.
In emacs, pull the menu “Help‣Send Bug Report...”, and write to them
that M-‹key› notation is a usability problem.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
Did you customize your emacs?
My argument is applied to default emacs on Windows, Mac OS X, and
Linux...
Also, what keyboard and OS are you on?
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
namekuseijin
> Please note that Alt is not the preferred prefix name for Emacs
> purposes. It's Meta, abbreviated M (e.g. M-x), for two reasons:
>
> 1) Meta can be mapped to keys other than Alt
>
> 2) Meta can be invoked with ESC as well, which is very handy in a
> terminal session (I actually use ESC all the time even in a graphical
> session)
Of course, the main reason being that calling the M-x commands "emacs"
is sweet, while "altex" sounds lame. :P
Eli Zaretskii
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:16:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > > • Universally understood
> >
> > So is Meta.
>
> Huh? Are you out of your mind Eli?
Not a very nice thing to say. Are you out of arguments yet?
> this can be easily verified though. Go stand on a street in downtown.
Meta doesn't need to be understood by anyone downtown, just by Emacs
users.
> > > • Identical To Key's Label
> >
> > Only on some keyboards.
>
> Huh? Are you serious or are you joking??
>
> I have a keyboard gallery here:
> http://xahlee.org/emacs/keyboards.html
>
> which includes several picts of different PC keyboards.
Not all keyboards in the world are PC keyboards.
> > > • Meta is Alt in practice
> >
> > Only on some keyboards.
>
> Huh? I'm talking about Emacs's default binding for emacs running in
> major OSes (Windows, OSX, Linux). On Windows and Linux it's Alt. On
> Apple computers in OSX with Apple's keyboard, it's Alt in Aquamac, Cmd
> in Carbon Emacs.
Again, this is not all. You have seen too few systems, and thus your
conclusions are skewed. GNU/Linux, for example, does not run only on
Intel machines with PC keyboards.
> > > • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
> >
> > Yes, they do, at least some of them.
>
> Did you read what i wrote?
Did you read what I wrote?
> > > So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
> > > emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
> > > become obsolete.
> >
> > You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
> > it was marked with a diamond.
>
>
> Are you saying, that the Sun Microsystem's keyboard precedes Lisp
> Machine's keyboard?
No, I'm saying that Meta doesn't come from Lisp machines.
> Do you have any detail, reference at all?
Yes, but no time to write it all.
> > > So back to emacs.... there was CUA mode. I don't know the history of
> > > the mode, but it is my guess that mode has been floating out there for
> > > quite some time before it is part of emacs. I think there must be huge
> > > resistance back then, even today, the use of it is somewhat
> > > controversial, and geekers are shy to admit they use it because that
> > > somehow makes them “Microsoft Kiddies”.
> >
> > You are wrong. As long as a mode is optional, there's normally no
> > resistance at all (assuming that it's written cleanly and according to
> > Emacs coding style and standards).
>
> So? what is your point?
That Emacs embraces change and progress, contrary to your remarks.
> > I hope the ratio of your lines to mine will not be so large next time,
> > though, or else I'd need to cut my losses and stop. I will never have
> > enough time even to read everything you managed to dump on me in
> > response to just 11 lines.
>
> Let's not start slurs ok?
Look who's talking. You just accused me of being insane, not reading
your messages and what's not.
Xah
> > From:Xah<xah...@gmail.com>
> > Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:16:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > > > • Universally understood
>
> > > So is Meta.
>
> > Huh? Are you out of your mind Eli?
>
> Not a very nice thing to say. Are you out of arguments yet?
>
> > this can be easily verified though. Go stand on a street in downtown.
>
> Meta doesn't need to be understood by anyone downtown, just by Emacs
> users.
The argument is not about whether Meta is understood by Emac users.
One of my argument for emacs to adopt the “Alt+‹key›” notation is that
this notation is universally understood, and i explained that this is
because 95% of Windows+Linux market share, as well as their use of PC
keyboards, which has maybe 99.99% market share.
> > > > • Identical To Key's Label
>
> > > Only on some keyboards.
>
> > Huh? Are you serious or are you joking??
>
> > I have a keyboard gallery here:
> >http://xahlee.org/emacs/keyboards.html
>
> > which includes several picts of different PC keyboards.
>
> Not all keyboards in the world are PC keyboards.
The argument is not about whether all keyboards in the world are PC
keyboards.
The point here is that the notation “Alt+‹key›” used a label that
appears on PC keyboards, the Alt. And PC keyboard has some 99% of
market share.
I wrote:
• Identical To Key's Label
You retort:
Only on some keyboards.
That's not reasonable.
> > > > • Meta is Alt in practice
>
> > > Only on some keyboards.
>
> > Huh? I'm talking about Emacs's default binding for emacs running in
> > major OSes (Windows, OSX, Linux). On Windows and Linux it's Alt. On
> > Apple computers in OSX with Apple's keyboard, it's Alt in Aquamac, Cmd
> > in Carbon Emacs.
>
> Again, this is not all. You have seen too few systems, and thus your
> conclusions are skewed. GNU/Linux, for example, does not run only on
> Intel machines with PC keyboards.
Right, but however, emacs are run today on Windows and Linux and Mac,
and perhaps 99.99% of emacs users today uses one of these OSes.
> > > > • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
>
> > > Yes, they do, at least some of them.
>
> > Did you read what i wrote?
>
> Did you read what I wrote?
Yes.
> > > > So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
> > > > emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
> > > > become obsolete.
>
> > > You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
> > > it was marked with a diamond.
>
> > Are you saying, that the Sun Microsystem's keyboard precedes Lisp
> > Machine's keyboard?
>
> No, I'm saying that Meta doesn't come from Lisp machines.
Where it came from? And how's the history of Meta is related in this
argument specifically?
> > Do you have any detail, reference at all?
>
> Yes, but no time to write it all.
Very funny.
> > > > So back to emacs.... there was CUA mode. I don't know the history of
> > > > the mode, but it is my guess that mode has been floating out there for
> > > > quite some time before it is part of emacs. I think there must be huge
> > > > resistance back then, even today, the use of it is somewhat
> > > > controversial, and geekers are shy to admit they use it because that
> > > > somehow makes them “Microsoft Kiddies”.
>
> > > You are wrong. As long as a mode is optional, there's normally no
> > > resistance at all (assuming that it's written cleanly and according to
> > > Emacs coding style and standards).
>
> > So? what is your point?
>
> That Emacs embraces change and progress, contrary to your remarks.
What change and progress? What remark?
You need to be specific and detailed to argue convincingly. I gave
detailed answers or defense of my point of view.
> > > I hope the ratio of your lines to mine will not be so large next time,
> > > though, or else I'd need to cut my losses and stop. I will never have
> > > enough time even to read everything you managed to dump on me in
> > > response to just 11 lines.
>
> > Let's not start slurs ok?
>
> Look who's talking. You just accused me of being insane, not reading
> your messages and what's not.
I didn't call you insane or any insult. The closest i said was “Huh?
Are you out of your mind Eli?” followed by nice explanation on the
issue. That phrase is a way to indiacte my surprise of what you are
saying.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Andreas Eder
>>>>> "Xah" == Xah <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
Xah> On Jul 29, 3:25 pm, Andreas Eder <andreas_e...@gmx.net> wrote:
>> Hi Xah,
>>
>> >>>>> "Xah" == Xah <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
Xah> I don't see my suggestion for emacs to adapt the “Alt+‹key›” notation
Xah> should be classified as a “feature”. Between Feature and Bug, i'd say
Xah> it's a bug, if forced.
>>
Xah> Remember, in my article
>>
Xah> “Emacs's M-‹key› Notation vs Alt+‹key› Notation”
Xah> http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
>>
Xah> The main reasons i gave are:
>>
Xah> • Universally understood
Xah> • Identical To Key's Label
Xah> • Meta is Alt in practice
Xah> • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
>>
>> But this just plain wrong! My Alt key does *not* generate Meta but
>> Alt (what a surprise) and I have a different key that generates
>> Meta. Meta is not Alt, not even in practice.
Xah> Did you customize your emacs?
No, that hasn't got anything to do with emacs. It is a question of
keyboard drivers and X11 keymaps. I did not change anything
related to keys in emacs.
I even have super and Hyper keys by the way.
Xah> My argument is applied to default emacs on Windows, Mac OS X, and
Xah> Linux...
Xah> Also, what keyboard and OS are you on?
It is a cherry linux keyboard and the OS is FreeBSD.
But as I already said, it hasn't got anything to do with that. It
is merely a question of setting up the right keyboard drivers and
layouts and you have your keys as you like them in any application
not just emacs.
Xah
> HiXah,
Ok. So you didn't customize emacs but you did customize your OS?
among computer keyboard users, those who has customized their
keymappings is perhaps less that 0.001%. If we narrow it down to
professional programers, it's still perhaps less than 0.01%.
In anycase, regardless what emacs uses as its shortcut notation, your
personal customization will still work.
I too, have extensive keyboard customization, both at OS level and
emacs level. I use Apple's computer running OSX, with a Microsoft's PC
keyboard. The Alt key on my keyboard is actually Mac's Cmd. The
WindowKey is actually the Opt/Alt key.
That's just my customization. I can't use it to argue that Alt is not
Alt.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
David Hansen
> Juanma Barranquero wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 09:25, Xah <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm actually don't have solid historical facts for the above points as
>>> i liked... but anyway i just want to write instead of like doing 10
>>> years of research and post 1 article and got overflooded.
>>
>> Then you're bound to make mistakes like this one:
>>
>>> For exampl,
>>> when Instant Messaging just began in 1999, by such as AOL.
>>
>> Instant Messaging started in 1996, with ICQ. AOL didn't buy it until 1998.
>>
>
> and Unix "talk" was around in 1993 (and probably well before then).
>
According to wikipedia: IRC: '88, `talk': 70s
David
Juanma Barranquero
> According to wikipedia: IRC: '88, `talk': 70s
What turned ICQ into a winner was usability: to have it active all the
time in a non-obtrusive way and be warned when friends were online,
the ability of sending messages to offline people, etc. No
revolutionary technology, but a big step up in user-friendliness.
J
Alan Mackenzie
This has got up to nearly 500 lines. I'm going to be doing some serious
pruning.
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 03:50:53PM -0700, Xah wrote:
> On Jul 29, 11:27 am, Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> wrote:
> Let's get clear on exactly what is the proposed change.
> (1) change all notations of M-key and C-key in emacs manual to Alt+key
> and Ctrl+key notation. Just to be more precise, the source of emacs
> manual is the texinfo source code, which are plain file. It generates
> the info files.
> (2) change somewhere in elisp source code, so that menu show shortcuts
> with the Alt+ and Ctrl+ notation.
> Note that elisp keymacro isn't in the proposed change, nor that elisp
> function such as ???kbd???.
Ah, right. Yes, I had automatically assumed that part of your change
would be using "A-" instead of "M-" in key sequences. You've made clear
that I had misunderstood.
Let me suggest that telling somebody "to bind an ALT-key comination, use
the \M- prefix; don't use \A-, because this will instead create a
keybinding for what used to be called the ALT-key, but isn't...." will
cause much more confusion than we have at the moment. The great thing
about "Meta" is that there's no key called that on a PC keyboard, so it's
just a matter of saying "Use the alt key".
[ .... ]
> > > Further, i'm not an experienced elisp coder as most of them are.
> > I would recommend you to get experienced. Like Emacs, elisp is
> > supremely easy to use, but unlike Emacs, it's also very easy to
> > learn (compared with monstrosities like C++ or Java).
> Alan, don't start, ok? :)
> (I'm no newbie and you knew. I started computer programing in ~1993,
> started paid programing job in 1995...)
I'm unsure how much elisp programming you've done. You're not exactly
being helpful in clarifying this.
[ .... ]
> As of now, i'm not sure i want to initiate the processing of actually
> sending in code to GNU org for many social reasons. I don't mean to be
> superficially mysterious... but for one thing, some (or perhaps
> several) people don't necessarily like me due to my newsgroup posts.
In free software development, personal like/dislike barely exists. You
ARE your contributions. The person who was calling you bad names last
week will warmly thank you for your new and useful contribution next
week.
> Also, i'm not sure i want to be part of FSF or GNU. Sure i support
> their ideas in general, but the OpenSource or FreeSoftware fervor
> sometimes i cannot take as good to society.
That you have in common with lots of free software developers, including
quite a few in the Emacs project.
[ .... ]
> > >http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html
> > With all due respect, that article is a bit superficial. It ignores
> > the work which would be needed to change, and it fails to argue that
> > the change is important enough to be worth even a small amount of
> > work. It seems more to be arguing that if we were starting from
> > scratch, the term "alt" would be the better one. I agree with that.
> well as mentioned before... i'm just thinking about the change in the
> manual, and the change in shortcut notation that shows up in menus. No
> change proposed for macros or any elisp function. I think that's more
> of what you are thinking.
Yes, it was. As already said, I think changing the manual to "Alt", but
leaving the key name as "meta" or "\M-" in the lisp would cause much
worse confusion than changing both consistently.
> I do think the change is important, because it makes emacs easier to
> use. The difficulty to start using emacs is one of the most cited
> criticism of emacs.
I think this difficulty is essential to Emacs. If you "simplified"
(i.e. dumbed down) Emacs to the point where newbies would find it easy,
what you would be left with wouldn't be Emacs, but some pale shadow of
it.
[ .... ]
> The thing is, as i learned more in responding to people in this thread,
> that some issue you just have to talk it out in detail. There are a lot
> misunderstandings.
One of the reasons we have emacs...@gnu.org.
[ .... ]
> > > The reason i gave, about why ... is better, is summarized like this:
> > > Universally understood
> > > Notation Same as Key Label
> > > Meta is Alt in practice
> > > Keyboards don't have Meta key today
> > > Can you point out, if any of these points are wrong, or other reasons
> > > this change is just bad?
> In last post, you mentioned some side effect of breaking customization
> lisp codes. But i hope to clarify here, that no lisp code change is
> proposed other than getting menus to display the new notation.
> I think that's your main point, but i couldn't think of other major
> points you are arguing against?
The incompatibility between calling the key "Alt" in the manual, but
"meta" or "\M-" in the code would be horrible. Which convention would
the doc-strings follow? Inevitably, some would say "alt", some would say
"meta". It would be ghastly.
> > repeat myself: it would be far too much work to be worthwhile, and it
> > wouldn't solve a problem, because nobody gets confused more than
> > momentarily by the term "meta" anyway.
> I think it's rather major confusion.
How many Emacs users do you know who, beyond their first day or two of
Emacs use, have difficulty with the term "meta"? I know of none, and I
think I only know one person who is irritated by it (yourself, of
course).
I think also that you picture two distinct categories of Emacs users:
Emacs developers, and "ordinary" users, and your change is for the
benefit of the latter. The project's view is that their is no rigid
distinction between "users" and "implementors" - there is a continuous
spectrum of elisp capability, and every user should be encouraged to
develop her lisp skills to customize her own Emacs optimally.
> we have to look at in a social way. Sure, tech geeker may say that any
> who can't understand a name alias is a idiot and not fit to use emacs.
> That's rather a bad attitude and most of the time not seriously said.
I think a worse attitude is to patronise users, to write software for
people "not as clever as yourself".
> software needs to be easy to use. Those not easy to use just become
> less and less popular and eventually obsolete. Emacs has dwindling
> user base.
Software needs to be easy to use; Emacs is supremely easy to use - it's
just difficult to learn. I don't think you've ever really thought
through the difference between "easy to use" and "easy to learn".
If the Emacs user base is dwindling (I think it is), it is because other
products have caught up to a large extent with Emacs's features. But for
those seeking the ultimate in ease of use and customisability, I haven't
seen anything else even close to Emacs.
Most software aims for the "easy to learn" user base. "Why, just hold
down the <shift> key and move the cursor to "select" (i.e. mark) some
text. What could be easier?" Actually, almost any other way of marking
text is easier and better, just it takes more effort to learn.
[ .... ]
> > Let me try again. This change, even if it could be achieved in a few
> > hours' hacking would cause incompatibilities in existing code,
> Note that no change in elisp code is involved, other than the one to
> make the menu show the new notation.
> All existing elisp code should behave as is.
The incompatibilities between the documentation "alt" and lisp "meta"
would make Elisp coding more difficult, more frustrating.
[ .... ]
> the bottom line is, for anyone who actually gets down to reading or
> wrtiing lisp , as the tech geeker would say: If you can't tell that M-
> is just a syntax notation for the Alt key, then you perhaps shouldn't
> code lisp.
But "A-" is currently the syntax notation for the (current Emacs) Alt key
(which isn't present on most keyboards). One of the participants in this
thread, Andreas Eder, has a keyboard with an Emacs alt key, and he
wouldn't want his keyboard to be dumbed down, just to become compatible
with a PC keyboard.
> Ideally, we would like to change the macro... but due to existing code
> it's rather too much work. (that's what you are thinking) Also, the
> issue gets complex since emacs already has the alt key idea from the
> lisp machine keyboard's Alt Mode key... represented in kbd macro as
> "A-", but isn't used today...
Andreas Eder uses it. There're probably lots of people who've
configured one of the "spare" keys on the PC keyboard to act as "alt".
[ .... ]
> > > I mentioned, there's another thing is changing how the shortcut ....
> > Correction: "key sequence".
> note i'm aware that "key sequence" is preferred emacs term for
> keyboard combination or sequential pressing of keys to invoke a
> command.
Your native language isn't English. In English, "shortcut" carries
derogatory connotations, such as trespassing and sloppy workmanship;
"shortcut" is never the natural regular way of doing anything. I put
this into the Wikipedia entry for shortcut last night.
I believe (although I have no evidence) that the term "shortcut" was
associated with key sequences either by a mouse manufacturer or a GUI
software maker (Microsoft?) as part of a marketing exercise, subtly
creating the notion that using the keyboard was somehow "not done by
decent people".
Be aware that each time you say "keyboard shortcut" you're insinuating
that using the keyboard is somehow illegitimate.
[ .... ]
> > The notation "alt-", of itself, is fine. The notation "meta-" is
> > marginally less fine. Your desire to change from "meta-" to "alt-"
> > posits dumb users for whom dumbing down is necessary or, at best,
> > very helpful.
> That's a bad way to look at things. Software needs to be easy to use.
> As a metric to judge this quality, the more dumber people who can use
> it, the better is the ease of use quality of the software.
That's just a metric of how easy it is for dumb people to use software.
Emacs isn't intended for the room temperature IQ segment of the
population.
I think the way to judge ease of use is to judge ease of use. The
questions to ask are things like:
(i) How many keystrokes/mouse ambages (weighted according to ease of
pressing) does it take to do X?
(ii) How easy is it to make mistakes in doing X? How easy is it to
recover from these mistakes?
(iii) How many annoying distractions does the product impose on the
user? How seriously does it get in the way?
(iv) How configurable is the product?
> > > Is it your opinion, that emacs should remain difficult to use for
> > > the sake of difficult to use?
> > My opinion is that emacs is supremely easy to use and should remain
> > so; that emacs acheives this ease of use partly at the cost of being
> > difficult to learn, and that this is a good tradeoff; that changing
> > from "meta" to "alt" would achieve a vanishingly small increase in
> > ease of learning, no increase in ease of use, and a massive amount
> > of pain for those forced to switch usage.
> Alright, i guess we disagree.
> You might know already, that i also think emacs is the best text
> editor and much more, despite some usabilitie issues on outset. If i
> didn't think emacs is so great, i wouldn't have spent so much energy
> arguing here.
I think you have spuriously conflated ease of use with ease of learning.
> Also, i wrote a emacs and elisp tutorial from a practical user's point
> of view. Many people liked my tutorial. For exmaple, it is linked in
> blogs, e.g. http://del.icio.us/url/c17bb01889fd1af321d585fe6fa3ec25 .
> Just to be sure, i also think emacs has great consistency, most clear
> and comprehensive doc, far more so than most any software apps...
> one example related i like to cite, is the usability of linux. In your
> stance, perhaps you think KDE/Gnome or Lindows is dumbing down? The
> very notion and phrase of dumbing down is bad Alan.
I disagree; it's useful and eloquent. It means making things easier to
use/learn by dumber people than could otherwise manage, and carries the
connotions of making things less useful for the less dumb.
I have Gnome on my current Gnu/Linux installation, but I only really use
it for starting Firefox or viewing graphical stuff (e.g. pdf documents).
Most of my work is on text, so I use the Linux tty's, which are
optimised for text handling.
> > > > Yes,Xah, that garbage is what your squiggles look like on a
> > > > terminal which isn't equipped with squiggle filters. "Feel
> > > > free" to stop dumping such garbage on English language fora,
> > > > please.
> > > Hum? You don't have the right font installed or something? My post
> > > should be in unicode with utf8 encoding.
> > It might well be. And I'm not wasting my time with stupid
> > international character codes any more than I'm going to waste my
> > time with MS-Word for reading files.doc. UTF has its place, but
> > it's suboptimal in the extreme for representing monolingual English.
> > If you want to piss off as many people as possible, just carry on
> > putting stupid multibyte characters into your posts. Nobody would
> > have any objection to your UTF8 if you restricted yourself to those
> > characters also in ASCII.
> I don't think you are being reasonable. today, even hardcore tech
> geekers prefers unicode.
Which hardcore tech geekers? And exactly how do they "prefer" unicode?
> Even in plain English, ascii is not as good since it doesn't have
> curly quotes and other symbols such as lambda.
10 years ago, you would have said that Usenets posts were better in
HTML, because you could specify the font and colours, and so on. It's
basically the same argument.
The fact is, fonts, colours, and curly quotes aren't essential or even
necessary for a plain English post. Lambda would only be very
occasionally necessary, such as when discussing maths. You could leave
out your curly quotes without changing the essence of your post in the
slightest.
[ .... ]
> > > .... notation changes. So, it shouldn't effect people's exiting
> > > customization.
> > Do you mean customisation on the way out, or do you mean "exciting"
> > customisation, such as is done by me? ;-)
> (^_^) ... not sure i got the joke.
"Exiting" means "going out". "Exciting" means it gets you breathing
heavily. You probably meant "exiSting". :-)
[ .... ]
> The need to change kbd macro syntax so that it become consistent with
> the suggestion, is good. But that gets hairy, as you explained. So the
> issue now, is wheher this change creates inconsistecy. In my opinion,
> no, because to be strict, emacs is already inconsistant by keep using
> a key name on lisp machine's keyboards that practically didn't exist
> anymore.
It would create an inconsistency which didn't previously exist. You're
saying that this inconsistency would be less bad than the existing one,
calling the "alt" key "meta. I disagree.
> One interesting point is that, on lisp machine's keyboard, it also has
> a Alt key, labeled ALT MODE. In emacs's keyboard macro syntax, this is
> written as "A-". So, when lisp keyboard went out and PC keyboard in,
> emacs possibly might have made a better fix by changing using this Alt
> key instead of Meta, instead of just mapping Meta to PC kbd's Alt.
This was a gradual change. It didn't happen overnight.
[ .... ]
Xah
> Hi,Xah!
>
> This has got up to nearly 500 lines. I'm going to be doing some serious
> pruning.
>
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 03:50:53PM -0700,Xahwrote:
> > On Jul 29, 11:27 am, Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> wrote:
> > Let's get clear on exactly what is the proposed change.
> > (1) change all notations of M-key and C-key in emacs manual to Alt+key
> > and Ctrl+key notation. Just to be more precise, the source of emacs
> > manual is the texinfo source code, which are plain file. It generates
> > the info files.
> > (2) change somewhere in elisp source code, so that menu show shortcuts
> > with the Alt+ and Ctrl+ notation.
> > Note that elisp keymacro isn't in the proposed change, nor that elisp
> > function such as ???kbd???.
>
> Ah, right. Yes, I had automatically assumed that part of your change
> would be using "A-" instead of "M-" in key sequences. You've made clear
> that I had misunderstood.
Sure thing! Thank you.
> Let me suggest that telling somebody "to bind an ALT-key comination, use
> the \M- prefix; don't use \A-, because this will instead create a
> keybinding for what used to be called the ALT-key, but isn't...." will
> cause much more confusion than we have at the moment. The great thing
> about "Meta" is that there's no key called that on a PC keyboard, so it's
> just a matter of saying "Use the alt key".
I don't think this is a problem.
The Alt- notation makes emacs easy to use for beginners.
For any programers or elite user who wants to do emacs customization
or key rebinding, they can easily understand that the syntax “M-” is
stands for Meta and is by default mapped to the Alt key.
(to quip the hardcore geeker: if one find this confusing, perhaps he
isn't fit to code elisp.)
Lisp itself has lots of unfixable baggage in the key macro syntax. For
example, there's also Hyper, Super, with syntax “H-” and “s-”. These
keys doesn't exist today (but one can bind them just like Meta, of
course). Further, there are quite a lot variations of the keyboard
macro syntax. I have written a essay on this, about 2700 words,
available at:
The Confusion of Emacs's Keystroke Representation
http://xahlee.org/emacs/keystroke_rep.html
Here's is one excerpt on lisp code to rebind the Enter key:
; equivalent code for a named special key: Enter
(global-set-key "\r" 'func-name)
(global-set-key [?\r] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [13] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [(13)] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [return] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [?\^M] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [?\^m] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [?\C-M] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [?\C-m] 'func-name)
(global-set-key [(?\C-m)] 'func-name)
(global-set-key (kbd "RET") 'func-name)
(global-set-key (kbd "<return>") 'func-name)
I dare say that half of emacs developers, can't explain fully every
variation above in exacting detail.
There's also some syntax that compile but no effect:
(global-set-key (kbd "M-S-b") 'forward-word) ; compile but no effect
In summary, if we adopt Alt+key notation in manuals and menus, i do
not think it introduces any confusion when it comes to the elisp
coding or emacs customization related to keybindings. I think it
actually makes it simpler. The logic is like this:
* There is a Meta key. (due to emacs history)
* The Meta is mapped to Alt key on PC keyboards.
* The keyboard macro syntax for the Meta key is "M-".
> [ .... ]
>
> > > > Further, i'm not an experienced elisp coder as most of them are.
> > > I would recommend you to get experienced. Like Emacs, elisp is
> > > supremely easy to use, but unlike Emacs, it's also very easy to
> > > learn (compared with monstrosities like C++ or Java).
> > Alan, don't start, ok? :)
> > (I'm no newbie and you knew. I started computer programing in ~1993,
> > started paid programing job in 1995...)
>
> I'm unsure how much elisp programming you've done. You're not exactly
> being helpful in clarifying this.
>
> [ .... ]
>
> > As of now, i'm not sure i want to initiate the processing of actually
> > sending in code to GNU org for many social reasons. I don't mean to be
> > superficially mysterious... but for one thing, some (or perhaps
> > several) people don't necessarily like me due to my newsgroup posts.
>
> In free software development, personal like/dislike barely exists. You
> ARE your contributions. The person who was calling you bad names last
> week will warmly thank you for your new and useful contribution next
> week.
Ideally, every one loves every one else in the FreeSoftware community.
In reality, hardly.
In fact, factions that don't get alone are rather the norm. vi vs
emacs, emacs vs xemacs, KDE vs Gnome, OpenSource vs FreeSoftware,
(open source) Common Lisps vs (open source) Schemes, ... etc. These
are rather just a few large scale examples. Personal level examples
and forking are less public but easy to find.
For example, to this day, there are few people i know online, who has
written elisp packages, will simply refuse, explicitly, any effort to
have their package be part of GNU emacs. And slurs towards RMS are all
over the place among programing project's online forums.
You may know, that there's also SXemacs, which is another emacs fork
(from Xemacs root) in as recent as 2004.
Among all the forked projects in OpenSource or Freesoftware, i think
you might agree, that there's rather not that much mutual loving.
Egad, i'm surprised you would put it that way explicitly.
Seems you just find "difficult to use" for the sake of itself
essential.
> [ .... ]
>
> > The thing is, as i learned more in responding to people in this thread,
> > that some issue you just have to talk it out in detail. There are a lot
> > misunderstandings.
>
> One of the reasons we have emacs-de...@gnu.org.
>
> [ .... ]
>
> > > > The reason i gave, about why ... is better, is summarized like this:
> > > > Universally understood
> > > > Notation Same as Key Label
> > > > Meta is Alt in practice
> > > > Keyboards don't have Meta key today
> > > > Can you point out, if any of these points are wrong, or other reasons
> > > > this change is just bad?
> > In last post, you mentioned some side effect of breaking customization
> > lisp codes. But i hope to clarify here, that no lisp code change is
> > proposed other than getting menus to display the new notation.
> > I think that's your main point, but i couldn't think of other major
> > points you are arguing against?
>
> The incompatibility between calling the key "Alt" in the manual, but
> "meta" or "\M-" in the code would be horrible. Which convention would
> the doc-strings follow? Inevitably, some would say "alt", some would say
> "meta". It would be ghastly.
Function or variable's doc-string are parsed before they are
displayed. So, just like in menus, M- will be shown as Alt+.
> > > repeat myself: it would be far too much work to be worthwhile, and it
> > > wouldn't solve a problem, because nobody gets confused more than
> > > momentarily by the term "meta" anyway.
> > I think it's rather major confusion.
>
> How many Emacs users do you know who, beyond their first day or two of
> Emacs use, have difficulty with the term "meta"? I know of none, and I
> think I only know one person who is irritated by it (yourself, of
> course).
There are stories we sometimes see here, that people say how they
loves emacs once they got over the initial hurdle.
But we can look at the situation from the other way. For each such
people, there are perhaps one hundred or one thousand times more of
people, who simply looked at emacs for 5 minutes, and refused to look
at emacs again for the rest of their programing career.
I know a lot people like that. In fact, perhaps 95% of programers i
know in my life refuse to have anything to do with emacs.
This fact can be easily checked online too. You can simply do polls in
any particular programing community of the thousands that are online.
Unless the community you picked is emacs or lisp related, it's likely
that less that 1% of professional programers use emacs.
If we poll for opinion why didn't they use emacs. It has so many great
features, a whole embeded language, so flexible, so powerful, but why
didn't they use it??? The first thing they tell you, is difficult to
use and crazy key combinations.
Is it really difficult to use? No, if you ask me or you. But where the
difficult to use senses came from? That's due to the million little
things like weird notations M- C- and weird terminologies (reversal of
Windows/Frame), non-standard shortcuts, weird names for copy/paste
like kill-ring yank kill-ring-save ...etc.
Can emacs fix these problems? Yes, absolutely, to some degree. Most of
these are historical. Nobody is to say kill-ring or yank is worse or
better term than copy/cut/paste. When emacs was around, there is
little or no other apps. Emacs was there first. But that attitude is
not practical in solving things. Computer indusry moves by various
forces, and today we have Copy/Cut/Paste as the standard, unirversally
understood terms, and XCV are the standard shortcuts.
Emacs can fix most of these usability problems at the user level.
The terms used in elisp and its function is rather hard to change, but
no change there is necessary. For those who are into writing elisp, he
is into the realm of programing, no longer a simple user.
> I think also that you picture two distinct categories of Emacs users:
> Emacs developers, and "ordinary" users, and your change is for the
> benefit of the latter. The project's view is that their is no rigid
> distinction between "users" and "implementors" - there is a continuous
> spectrum of elisp capability, and every user should be encouraged to
> develop her lisp skills to customize her own Emacs optimally.
>
> > we have to look at in a social way. Sure, tech geeker may say that any
> > who can't understand a name alias is a idiot and not fit to use emacs.
> > That's rather a bad attitude and most of the time not seriously said.
>
> I think a worse attitude is to patronise users, to write software for
> people "not as clever as yourself".
I don't think that's a good philosophy.
For example, should one advocate slide-rule or abacus than the dumb-
down hand-held calculators?
Things improve and progress in society. Whenever new tech is invented,
throughout history, in general there's resistance by old timers,
calling it dumb down, for kids, novelty, often to the degree of being
insulted if suggested to use it. Examples include hand-held
calculator, symbolic math software, mechanical type-writter, credit
card, arabic numeral (as opposed to Roman Numerals). These few i
actually know a bit of their history.
from another way of looking at it... we can look at the success of
Microsoft. Sure, some tech geeker thinks because they break the law.
But that's not very fair. Microsoft rose to success and dorminate the
market in the early 1990s mostly due to its high quality/price ratio.
You may argue that this is not true... but even today, most people
simply choose Microsoft products such as its VisualStudio, including
many hard-core professional programers at our level.
For another example, consider Apple's Xcode. If would be silly, if the
Xcode designers say to themselves: No, we need to make it hard to use,
so that dumb people won't be able to use it.
> > software needs to be easy to use. Those not easy to use just become
> > less and less popular and eventually obsolete. Emacs has dwindling
> > user base.
>
> Software needs to be easy to use; Emacs is supremely easy to use - it's
> just difficult to learn. I don't think you've ever really thought
> through the difference between "easy to use" and "easy to learn".
I agree actually that emacs is easy to use. In fact i agree it is even
easy to learn. Perhaps it is more correct to say, that emacs is more
difficult to learn in comparison to other editors. However, when we
compare what the software/editor is capable of, then emacs's time-to-
learn/power-and-capability is far less then other editors.
However, emacs still can use many improvements. In my opinion,
adopting the Alt+ and Ctrl+ notation for keyboard shortcut, is one of
them.
It will make emacs even more easier to learn. With this adoption,
users no longer needs to read in the slapsh screen that C means
Control and M means Meta which is Alt. So, one step of learning is
reduced.
> If the Emacs user base is dwindling (I think it is), it is because other
> products have caught up to a large extent with Emacs's features. But for
> those seeking the ultimate in ease of use and customisability, I haven't
> seen anything else even close to Emacs.
>
> Most software aims for the "easy to learn" user base. "Why, just hold
> down the <shift> key and move the cursor to "select" (i.e. mark) some
> text. What could be easier?" Actually, almost any other way of marking
> text is easier and better, just it takes more effort to learn.
No argument from me here. Some standard practice, such as holding down
shift then press arrow key to select, is in my opinion very
inefficient. Emacs's way is much better.
> [ .... ]
>
> > > Let me try again. This change, even if it could be achieved in a few
> > > hours' hacking would cause incompatibilities in existing code,
> > Note that no change in elisp code is involved, other than the one to
> > make the menu show the new notation.
> > All existing elisp code should behave as is.
>
> The incompatibilities between the documentation "alt" and lisp "meta"
> would make Elisp coding more difficult, more frustrating.
>
> [ .... ]
>
> > the bottom line is, for anyone who actually gets down to reading or
> > wrtiing lisp , as the tech geeker would say: If you can't tell that M-
> > is just a syntax notation for the Alt key, then you perhaps shouldn't
> > code lisp.
>
> But "A-" is currently the syntax notation for the (current Emacs) Alt key
> (which isn't present on most keyboards). One of the participants in this
> thread, Andreas Eder, has a keyboard with an Emacs alt key, and he
> wouldn't want his keyboard to be dumbed down, just to become compatible
> with a PC keyboard.
He is perhaps unusual. People who customize their own keyboard is
rather few, perhaps less than 1% among professional programers. Those
who customize, or buy non-standard keyboards, are rather on their own.
I use Dvorak keyboard. Some software, especially games, assumes a
qwerty keyboard and have the WASD keys hardwired as navigation keys. I
can bitch about it, but basically using a “non-standard” keymapping i
take for granted some inconveniences due to my choice of something
that's not widely adapted.
> > Ideally, we would like to change the macro... but due to existing code
> > it's rather too much work. (that's what you are thinking) Also, the
> > issue gets complex since emacs already has the alt key idea from the
> > lisp machine keyboard's Alt Mode key... represented in kbd macro as
> > "A-", but isn't used today...
>
> Andreas Eder uses it. There're probably lots of people who've
> configured one of the "spare" keys on the PC keyboard to act as "alt".
>
> [ .... ]
>
> > > > I mentioned, there's another thing is changing how the shortcut ....
> > > Correction: "key sequence".
> > note i'm aware that "key sequence" is preferred emacs term for
> > keyboard combination or sequential pressing of keys to invoke a
> > command.
>
> Your native language isn't English. In English, "shortcut" carries
> derogatory connotations, such as trespassing and sloppy workmanship;
> "shortcut" is never the natural regular way of doing anything. I put
> this into the Wikipedia entry for shortcut last night.
For better or worse, keyboard shortcut has become the standard term
for denoting what we call keybinding. It is adopted by MS Windows, Mac
OSX, Linuxes. Together they account perhaps 99% of market share.
I think emacs should adopt it to...
> I believe (although I have no evidence) that the term "shortcut" was
> associated with key sequences either by a mouse manufacturer or a GUI
> software maker (Microsoft?) as part of a marketing exercise, subtly
> creating the notion that using the keyboard was somehow "not done by
> decent people".
LOL. What crazy idea you have. Where did you get that from?
If i were to guess, "shortcut" became the term simply because it was a
_short_ _cut_. For example, instead of using the mouse to pull a menu
command, you _short_ _cut_ the task by pressing a key. It's _short_
because it's faster, and _cut_ away more labor.
I don't think "keyboard shortcut" is a more quality term then
keybinding. However, many English terms are illogical.
I presume that people liked the term "keyboard shortcut" much better
and therefore it became the dorminant term, because it conveys the
idea of using keyboard to shortcut the labor. The term "keybinding"
necessarily entails the technical concept of key and commands. Most
people are not familiar with computer science concepts.
> Be aware that each time you say "keyboard shortcut" you're insinuating
> that using the keyboard is somehow illegitimate.
You wish.
> [ .... ]
>
> > > The notation "alt-", of itself, is fine. The notation "meta-" is
> > > marginally less fine. Your desire to change from "meta-" to "alt-"
> > > posits dumb users for whom dumbing down is necessary or, at best,
> > > very helpful.
> > That's a bad way to look at things. Software needs to be easy to use.
> > As a metric to judge this quality, the more dumber people who can use
> > it, the better is the ease of use quality of the software.
>
> That's just a metric of how easy it is for dumb people to use software.
> Emacs isn't intended for the room temperature IQ segment of the
> population.
>
> I think the way to judge ease of use is to judge ease of use. The
> questions to ask are things like:
>
> (i) How many keystrokes/mouse ambages (weighted according to ease of
> pressing) does it take to do X?
> (ii) How easy is it to make mistakes in doing X? How easy is it to
> recover from these mistakes?
> (iii) How many annoying distractions does the product impose on the
> user? How seriously does it get in the way?
> (iv) How configurable is the product?
Perhaps it is surprise, but i don't disagree on these points.
Yes but most people are not like you or me. Most people want graphics,
youtube, flash, cookies.
Emacs can be made, such that it will please these people reasonably,
yet sacrifize absolute Z E R O in any degree for computer scientists
or programers like us. I emphasize, sacrifise absolutly nothing of its
power, flexibility, consistency.
I'm a efficiency nerd. I'm also a extreme functional nerd. (and a math
nerd) I ABSOLUTELY do not care any bit about fluff and prettiness. In
is my opinion, that for any tool, functionality, efficiency of
operation, power must come first. Prettiness and fluff good, but they
must come AFTER functionality, efficiency of operation, power. Easy
learning is important too. But in general it should come after the
functionality etc criterions.
MY PROPOSAL ABOUT EMACS, WILL NOT IN ANY POSSIBLE WAY, HOWEVER SLIGHT,
REDUCE ANY POSSIBLE EFFICIENCY, FUNCTIONALITY, POWER OF EMACS.
Sorry for shouting, but that's how i feel and prefer things to be. It
is consistent with regards to the above, that i think the notation Alt
+ and Ctrl+ for emacs's manuals and menu, is a good thing.
Curly quotes are perhaps not essential but very useful. They function
as a matching pair, so that one can syntactically determine which is
opening and closing. The straight quote "" doesn't have this property,
so for example, one practical problem you see is that many source code
got syntax colored wrong because odd numbre of straight quotes.
Another example, in emac's manual, it adopts the convention of using `
and ' for opening and cloning quotes, which is basically just a ascii
hack for the curly left single quote and right quote.
The ` and ' are rather ugly, and in meddles with lisp code...
Unicode is these days are universal. It's in many web standards such
as XML and programing lang spec such as Java, Haskell, Scheme 6... get
over it Alan. Install a new newsreader or something.
> [ .... ]
>
> > > > .... notation changes. So, it shouldn't effect people's exiting
> > > > customization.
> > > Do you mean customisation on the way out, or do you mean "exciting"
> > > customisation, such as is done by me? ;-)
> > (^_^) ... not sure i got the joke.
>
> "Exiting" means "going out". "Exciting" means it gets you breathing
> heavily. You probably meant "exiSting". :-)
Lol. all the trouble for a typo.
> [ .... ]
>
> > The need to change kbd macro syntax so that it become consistent with
> > the suggestion, is good. But that gets hairy, as you explained. So the
> > issue now, is wheher this change creates inconsistecy. In my opinion,
> > no, because to be strict, emacs is already inconsistant by keep using
> > a key name on lisp machine's keyboards that practically didn't exist
> > anymore.
>
> It would create an inconsistency which didn't previously exist. You're
> saying that this inconsistency would be less bad than the existing one,
> calling the "alt" key "meta. I disagree.
>
> > One interesting point is that, on lisp machine's keyboard, it also has
> > a Alt key, labeled ALT MODE. In emacs's keyboard macro syntax, this is
> > written as "A-". So, when lisp keyboard went out and PC keyboard in,
> > emacs possibly might have made a better fix by changing using this Alt
> > key instead of Meta, instead of just mapping Meta to PC kbd's Alt.
>
> This was a gradual change. It didn't happen overnight.
>
> [ .... ]
>
> > Xah
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Joost Kremers
> example, there's also Hyper, Super, with syntax ?H-? and ?s-?. These
> keys doesn't exist today
says who? on my machine, X recognises the windows key as Super.
--
Joost Kremers joostk...@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)
Eli Zaretskii
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:49:54 -0700 (PDT)
>
> among computer keyboard users, those who has customized their
> keymappings is perhaps less that 0.001%. If we narrow it down to
> professional programers, it's still perhaps less than 0.01%.
Yes, sure: there's Xah, and then there are the other 0.001%.
Eli Zaretskii
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:55:26 -0700 (PDT)
>
> because 95% of Windows+Linux market share, as well as their use of PC
> keyboards, which has maybe 99.99% market share.
Please tell where did you get these numbers. Are they based on some
survey, or are they just your idea of what they should be?
> > Not all keyboards in the world are PC keyboards.
>
> The argument is not about whether all keyboards in the world are PC
> keyboards.
>
> The point here is that the notation “Alt+‹key›” used a label that
> appears on PC keyboards, the Alt. And PC keyboard has some 99% of
> market share.
Emacs works on more keyboard types than just PC keyboards. And
someone already told you that even on PC keyboards people sometimes
remap their Alt key. As for the 99% figure, see above.
> I wrote:
> • Identical To Key's Label
>
> You retort:
> Only on some keyboards.
>
> That's not reasonable.
Why, what goes against your opinions is necessarily unreasonable?
> > > > > So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
> > > > > emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
> > > > > become obsolete.
> >
> > > > You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
> > > > it was marked with a diamond.
> >
> > > Are you saying, that the Sun Microsystem's keyboard precedes Lisp
> > > Machine's keyboard?
> >
> > No, I'm saying that Meta doesn't come from Lisp machines.
>
> Where it came from? And how's the history of Meta is related in this
> argument specifically?
You tell me: you raised this argument in the first place, see above.
> > > So? what is your point?
> >
> > That Emacs embraces change and progress, contrary to your remarks.
>
> What change and progress? What remark?
How about re-reading your own messages? There you claimed that Free
Software tends to be slow in embracing progress and change.
> You need to be specific and detailed to argue convincingly.
I have no illusions that I will ever convince you.
> > > Let's not start slurs ok?
> >
> > Look who's talking. You just accused me of being insane, not reading
> > your messages and what's not.
>
> I didn't call you insane or any insult. The closest i said was “Huh?
> Are you out of your mind Eli?”
Well, ``out of your mind'' is pretty close to ``insane'' in my book.
> That phrase is a way to indiacte my surprise of what you are saying.
Perhaps you should find nicer ways of expressing surprise. How about
"I'm surprised"?
David Kastrup
I probably count as sort of a power Emacs user and am even maintainer of
a larger Emacs package.
I even have defadvice in my .emacs, but no keymapping customization. If
I find a mapping particularly useless or desirable, I tend to argue my
case upstream (of course, it helps if I _am_ upstream) and get the
mappings established there.
In that manner, when I use Emacs somewhere else without my
customizations, I don't find myself completely out of my depth.
Xah
> Xahwrote:
> > example, there's also Hyper, Super, with syntax ?H-? and ?s-?. These
> > keys doesn't exist today
>
> says who? on my machine, X recognises the windows key as Super.
you can create keymapping software with arbitrary names.
the point is, that Hyper, Super were keys on lisp machine's keyboard,
which went extinct.
See photos here:
Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html
Today, there is no keyborad that has these keys. (practically
speaking. Of course, you can always find specilize sources, customized
keyboards, or ebay)
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
Best,
Dear Eli Zaretskii,
I understand perhaps we have some crossing here in the past.
I tried to follow reasonable discussion with you in this thread.
I don't see you being reasonable at all in the past few replies to me.
If you don't agree, that's fine. I always had some crazy ideas.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Bastien
> So, either i try to spend tons of time to be the salesman for emacs
> modernization, or i actually take things into my hands and start my
> own emacs distro.
For now forks are of political signifiance because it's not easy to get
features from a forked version back into the original version.
When Emacs will officially be developed using a dVCS, expect more forks,
an easier way to integrate "foreign" improvements, and less energy spent
on convincing people that what you do is best.
--
Bastien
Ted Zlatanov
>> In that case I suggest you start by making your change suggestion
>> through the proper channels, not in this newsgroup. I don't feel like
>> explaining to you basic facts about man-hours, volunteer labor, and the
>> hundreds of thousands of Emacs users that would deal with that change.
>> Again, I'm not being rude, just unwilling to spend my time explaining
>> all this when you don't appear to have any experience writing manuals,
>> software, or doing user support.
X> Can you keep to topic instead giving me extraneous advice?
Above I listed the things I don't want to explain to you (but, with a
little brain activity, you could understand for yourself) that make your
4 man-hours estimate to implement your proposed change extremely
unrealistic. This is very much on-topic. It's frustrating that you
simply ignore reasonable answers when they don't suit you.
X> For example, i suggest you more books about philosophy, critical
X> thinking. I don't mean to be rude, but really, reading those books
X> will help you discuss more fruitfully, even if you don't have real
X> world experience working in a large software project.
Thanks, I'll put it on my reading list. My philosophy readings have
been lax lately, what with the pomegranate garden blooming and the
seawater distillation plant getting jammed with dolphins and the
orphanage running low on porridge. I assume that meanwhile you've been
working in large software projects.
X> The proper channel for telling me my use of Alt-‹key› is wrong then
X> perhaps is email.
I don't care to tell *you* that. I tried to tell the end user who you
misled when you used Alt, while the Emacs manual and community uses
Meta. That's why I am suggesting footnotes, so your information is not
misleading but merely verbose.
Ted
Xah
> On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:20:35 -0700 (PDT)Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> In that case I suggest you start by making your change suggestion
> >> through the proper channels, not in this newsgroup. I don't feel like
> >> explaining to you basic facts about man-hours, volunteer labor, and the
> >> hundreds of thousands of Emacs users that would deal with that change.
> >> Again, I'm not being rude, just unwilling to spend my time explaining
> >> all this when you don't appear to have any experience writing manuals,
> >> software, or doing user support.
>
> X> Can you keep to topic instead giving me extraneous advice?
>
> Above I listed the things I don't want to explain to you (but, with a
> little brain activity, you could understand for yourself) that make your
> 4 man-hours estimate to implement your proposed change extremely
> unrealistic. This is very much on-topic. It's frustrating that you
> simply ignore reasonable answers when they don't suit you.
One thing about argument, especially among newsgroup tech geekers, is
that reasoning and critical thinking is wanting, but lots huff and
puff and sneer. In this thread, i think Eli Zaretskii took the Gold
for huffy-puffy.
Your first post, is very good i think. It has solid technical info, on
topic, and helpful to new emacs users.
> X> For example, i suggest you more books about philosophy, critical
> X> thinking. I don't mean to be rude, but really, reading those books
> X> will help you discuss more fruitfully, even if you don't have real
> X> world experience working in a large software project.
>
> Thanks, I'll put it on my reading list. My philosophy readings have
> been lax lately, what with the pomegranate garden blooming and the
> seawater distillation plant getting jammed with dolphins and the
> orphanage running low on porridge. I assume that meanwhile you've been
> working in large software projects.
LOL. Seriously i did not know you were just fucking with me in the
past few messages or what.
No, i have not been working on large software projects. In the past
few years, i lived in my car for a couple years and am currently still
largely a bum.
> X> The proper channel for telling me my use of Alt-‹key› is wrong then
> X> perhaps is email.
>
> I don't care to tell *you* that. I tried to tell the end user who you
> misled when you used Alt, while the Emacs manual and community uses
> Meta. That's why I am suggesting footnotes, so your information is not
> misleading but merely verbose.
Yesterday i filed a bug report on this issue. I'm happy to say, it is
received favorably.
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.bug/browse_frm/thread/c92887cbc7c6f843
PS To all, there's a emacs group in Second Life. We can meet and voice
chat. I'm Xah Toll there.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Eli Zaretskii
> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:34:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On Jul 31, 12:07 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:20:35 -0700 (PDT)Xah<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >> In that case I suggest you start by making your change suggestion
> > >> through the proper channels, not in this newsgroup. I don't feel like
> > >> explaining to you basic facts about man-hours, volunteer labor, and the
> > >> hundreds of thousands of Emacs users that would deal with that change.
> > >> Again, I'm not being rude, just unwilling to spend my time explaining
> > >> all this when you don't appear to have any experience writing manuals,
> > >> software, or doing user support.
> >
> > X> Can you keep to topic instead giving me extraneous advice?
> >
> > Above I listed the things I don't want to explain to you (but, with a
> > little brain activity, you could understand for yourself) that make your
> > 4 man-hours estimate to implement your proposed change extremely
> > unrealistic. This is very much on-topic. It's frustrating that you
> > simply ignore reasonable answers when they don't suit you.
>
> One thing about argument, especially among newsgroup tech geekers, is
> that reasoning and critical thinking is wanting, but lots huff and
> puff and sneer. In this thread, i think Eli Zaretskii took the Gold
> for huffy-puffy.
Look who's talking. Your technique of taking something Ted wrote and
saying that I'm responsible for that in some way of course sets a fine
example of civilized argument about technical issues. It's in no way
an example of huffy-puffy, no sir!
I guess this means you still didn't recover from the fact that you had
no real arguments to beat mine. I forgive you.
Xah
Thank you. :)
I like to speak to you privately in my office about the problems of
elisp manual i sent in gnu's bug report few months ago.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Nikolaj Schumacher
> Yesterday i filed a bug report on this issue.
That's great. I'm also glad you reported a single issue and didn't mix
all your other concerns in. Hopefully it'll be a more focused discussion than
the monstrosity going on here.
> PS To all, there's a emacs group in Second Life.
Is there a major mode for that? ;)
regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher
Ted Zlatanov
>> Above I listed the things I don't want to explain to you (but, with a
>> little brain activity, you could understand for yourself) that make your
>> 4 man-hours estimate to implement your proposed change extremely
>> unrealistic. This is very much on-topic. It's frustrating that you
>> simply ignore reasonable answers when they don't suit you.
X> One thing about argument, especially among newsgroup tech geekers, is
X> that reasoning and critical thinking is wanting, but lots huff and
X> puff and sneer.
<colbert>I accept your apology.</colbert>
X> In this thread, i think Eli Zaretskii took the Gold for huffy-puffy.
You're diverting the discussion and getting off the topic. Please
don't. Acknowledge your 4-hour estimate was unrealistic and let's move
on.
Your bug submission was the right way to raise the issue, and although
the manual will not be changed (unless I've misunderstood the messages),
people seem to be in favor of providing alternatives in the menus. This
is similar in spirit to what I suggested to you about adding "Meta is
accessible via the Alt key" footnotes to your messages. Meta will stay,
but new Emacs users will be helped to understand that it's bound to the
Alt key on most modern keyboards.
Ted
Harry Putnam
>. . . . . . . In this thread, i think Eli Zaretskii took the Gold
> for huffy-puffy.
I've wanted to jump into this debate a few times but realized I had
nothing to add that hadn't been said. But now I feel I must reply to
this comment. Even though my comments are quite a ways off the
subject.
I'm not a developer, only a semi-longtime user. And in fact one of
those semi-dunce users who often has a hard time learning about emacs.
I can tell you that you are way off base in taking up a sort of feisty
attitude to Eli. I can say first hand that over a period of years,
probably at least 8 yrs, I've been getting answers to my questions
from Eli. He has always been very professional. Sometimes Eli would
state a fact that made it obvious that I hadn't thought very much
before asking my question and sometimes that would make me want to
respond in some off-hand feisty manner,
But on reflection I'd invariably find that I was clearly off base and
all Eli had done was force me to see that.
So for your information and something to think about before you
continue to argue, Eli has answered my (often dumb) questions
patiently and at length for years... questions probably numbering in
the several hundreds by now... That is not the act of someone who
likes to huff and puff.
Eli has even taken what was of value in my questions at times and used
it to develop emacs to suite users like me. I'm thinking of a time a
couple of years ago when I complained about the colors emacs defaulted
to in console mode. Eli spent quite a bit of time helping me figure
out which were a better set and then fixing that aspect of emacs.
I can recall a time a few yrs ago when I had a particularly thorny
problem I just could not seem to get right, Eli encouraged another
developer who was more expert in that area to ssh into my machine and
help me solve an emacs problem.
Please take the time to review a few yrs of this group where you will
see Eli's name steadfastly answering questions with lots of helpful
information for any user who has posted a question.
With a record like that Eli simply does not deserve that kind of
comment. Please give your comments some more thought before making
unjustified commentary,
I've learned a considerable amount from posts of yours too, and have
learned to expect a (welcome) somewhat different take on things.
Usually helpful, from your posts. But to see comments like yours
about ELi, hat just makes me want to skip your comments.
Please extend some effort to keep things on an even keel.
Xah
Harry Putnam wrote:
«I can tell you that you are way off base in taking up a sort of
feisty attitude to Eli. ... [~450 words of detail] ...»
Perhaps you are a bit off in using the term “way off base”. The use of
the phrase “feisty attitude”, is rather good though. I always enjoyed
being feisty.
Whatever, if anything, is between me and Eli, is really between us,
esp the exchange between us in this thread has ended few days ago.
(now revived. yay!) But now you post some 450 words in defense of Eli,
i feel it makes me look silly and indignant. I refuse to be humbled
here and there. If you look at this thread of the exchanges between me
and Eli, i would rather think, he's just dallying about.
Thank you however, for your opinion of supporting Eli. If one day i
plan to be his enemy, i'll count you in too.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Xah
> I've learned a considerable amount from posts of yours too, and have
> learned to expect a (welcome) somewhat different take on things.
> Usually helpful, from your posts.
OMG i miss this paragraph.
Thank you very much!
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
David Kastrup
> Harry Putnam wrote:
> «I can tell you that you are way off base in taking up a sort of
> feisty attitude to Eli. ... [~450 words of detail] ...»
[...]
> Whatever, if anything, is between me and Eli, is really between us,
> esp the exchange between us in this thread has ended few days ago.
No, it isn't as long as you don't take it to personal Mail.
> (now revived. yay!) But now you post some 450 words in defense of Eli,
> i feel it makes me look silly and indignant. I refuse to be humbled
> here and there.
Your postings make you look silly and indignant, and this here is no
exception, though probably leaning more to the indignant side than most
others.
> Thank you however, for your opinion of supporting Eli. If one day i
> plan to be his enemy, i'll count you in too.
Now that's being silly again.
Xah
On Aug 6, 11:39 pm, David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> wrote:
> Xah <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Harry Putnam wrote:
> > «I can tell you that you are way off base in taking up a sort of
> > feisty attitude to Eli. ... [~450 words of detail] ...»
>
> [...]
>
> > Whatever, if anything, is between me and Eli, is really between us,
> > esp the exchange between us in this thread has ended few days ago.
>
> No, it isn't as long as you don't take it to personal Mail.
Well, for example, they say you shouldn't do personal arugments
because it's off topic.
Also, implied in my message is that what happens between me and Eli is
more than, say, things you can see on comp.emacs.help.
> > (now revived. yay!) But now you post some 450 words in defense of Eli,
> > i feel it makes me look silly and indignant. I refuse to be humbled
> > here and there.
>
> Your postings make you look silly and indignant, and this here is no
> exception, though probably leaning more to the indignant side than most
> others.
I don't think i agree with your judgement.
> > Thank you however, for your opinion of supporting Eli. If one day i
> > plan to be his enemy, i'll count you in too.
>
> Now that's being silly again.
No doubt. It can, under circumstances, be considered as humour, or,
rather a polite form of ending a awkward situation.
I don't feel i should continue this conversation, but often then
people take me to be aloof. So, i'm obliged to reply on (sans ill
manner), if you prefer.
You can read about my thoughts on netiquette here:
Netiquette Anthropology
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/troll.html
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Harry Putnam
You miss a lot of things here on this list. I hope you don't consider
it humbling to take the time to read thoroughly.
But in truth, your comment above was a nice gesture to let me know you
saw it and were willing to admit not having read carefully.
In defense of my 450 words that you seem to think is overboard. I
attempted to show a picture of Eli as he has really functioned here,
and too, tried to show briefly how you have functioned here at better
times.
I thought detail to be better than unsupported bluster in defense of
Eli.
There has been too much unsupported opinion aired here already.
You seem to take to the notion of being feisty as if it were a worthy
disposition.
In the US people call a dog a `feist' when it yaps incessantly about
nothing. A `feist' might sometimes be seen barking angrily at the rain.
Oh, and by the way I did take your closing comments about lumping me
in as enemy too, as humor, and it shows the truth of what I said about
often getting a (welcome) different take and fresh way of looking at
or saying things from your input here.
My comments on this are now at an end. Thanks for reading.
David Combs
>>
...
...
>
>> • Keyboards don't have Meta key today
>
>Yes, they do, at least some of them.
>
>> So i consider it more as bug report now i think about it. Why? Because
>> emacs failed to update itself when its keyboard under lisp machines
>> become obsolete.
>
>You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
>it was marked with a diamond.
THANK YOU!
Until now, I never knew what that key was.
What I use is the sun #6 keyboard -- has the control-key
in the RIGHT place, just to the left of the "a" key.
(Just like with the old asr-33!)
David
Barry Margolin
> You have your history wrong: Meta came from old Sun keyboards, where
> it was marked with a diamond.
Nope, you have it wrong. Meta came from the SAIL keyboard at Stanford
AI Lab, developed in 1971. This was more than a decade before Sun was
founded. Of course, the Sun founders came from Stanford, so they were
undoubtedly familiar with this keyboard, and the diamond key was
presumably put there to serve the same function. Similarly with Apple's
command key.
http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/1-6-RAIL-keyb
d.jpg
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
Xah
> Nope, you have it wrong. Meta came from the SAIL keyboard at Stanford
> AI Lab, developed in 1971. This was more than a decade before Sun was
> founded. Of course, the Sun founders came from Stanford, so they were
> undoubtedly familiar with this keyboard, and the diamond key was
> presumably put there to serve the same function. Similarly with Apple's
> command key.
>
> http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm
>
> http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures
> /display/1-6-RAIL-keybd.jpg
Thanks for this informative post!
Quote from the article:
«A fancier display system, installed at SAIL in 1971, put a terminal
using a television monitor on everyone's desk. SAIL was apparently the
first system in the world that put terminals in offices -- before
that, the few computer displays that existed were kept in "display
rooms." This display system also included an advanced keyboard that
introduced the "Meta" key and other features to facilitate touch-
typing. That keyboard design was picked up promptly by MIT and
Carnegie-Mellon University and later by Apple, whose Command key is a
direct descendent of the Meta key on the SAIL keyboard.»
i did a quick google image search but didn't find more photos...
is here more info about this keyboard? or other doc about the origin
of the Meta?
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Barry Margolin
<6dbf5b52-af69-4517...@s20g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
Xah <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
I wasn't able to find much more, either. Googling for "sail keyboard"
mostly finds articles about bands whose song titles contain the word
"sail". Google needs a way for you to tell it the general topic area,
so when you're looking for computer stuff you don't get rock & roll
answers.
But you might want to look at the picture of the Knight keyboard, which
was MIT's evolution of the SAIL keyboard:
http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/Knight.html
and the Space Cadet keyboard that was derived from it for use on the
Lisp Machines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard
Allan Gottlieb
> I wasn't able to find much more, either. Googling for "sail keyboard"
> mostly finds articles about bands whose song titles contain the word
> "sail". Google needs a way for you to tell it the general topic area,
> so when you're looking for computer stuff you don't get rock & roll
> answers.
I tried "sail keyboard mit" and found
http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm
This contains "This display system also included an advanced keyboard
that introduced the "Meta" key and other features to facilitate
touch-typing. That keyboard design was picked up promptly by MIT and
Carnegie-Mellon University and later by Apple, whose Command key is a
direct descendent of the Meta key on the SAIL keyboard."
allan
(Barry, sorry for previously sending directly to you)