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NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:53:47 -0500
From: Blake McBride <bl...@mcbride.name>
Newsgroups: comp.emacs, gnu.emacs
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:53:47 -0500
Message-ID: <2012091911534714174-blake@mcbridename>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Missing default functionality hurts emacs adoption
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Greetings,

I have been using emacs as my main editor for about 20 years now. Prior 
to that I used VI.  Over the last many years I have used VI very 
infrequently.  My son is taking CS in college.  He had need for a 
quick, already-installed editor so I decided to write a Wiki page 
telling him how to use VI.  Writing this page ( 
http://wiki.arahant.com/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Vi ) caused me to re-think 
the whole emacs vs. vi debate.  This re-thinking led me to some 
conclusions that I think could significantly help the emacs community 
so I thought I would share those thoughts publicly.

I am not going to compare the various benefits of each editor.  My main 
concern is why someone would use VI when emacs is so much more 
powerful.  After some thought I came to the realization that VI does a 
handful of things that are among the most common editing functions 
needed and used that are significantly and totally unnecessarily 
difficult in emacs.  In other words, VI does many things that a typical 
user wants to do easily and emacs is difficult doing those same basic 
tasks.

In spite of this, I realized that the sole reason why I've used emacs 
all these years is because from the very beginning I realized the 
shortcomings of emacs and I wrote some lisp functions to do what I (and 
I think most people) needed.  Since I wrote this functionality, I have 
had all the advantages of doing the simple things I needed simply, and 
then also had all the other benefits to boot.

I think when a VI user starts using emacs (and not knowing lisp like I 
do) they immediately get frustrated with a few basic things and they 
give up.  Emacs enthusiasts would tell them to just stick in there a 
little longer but now I think they are wrong.  There is a problem 
(missing basic functionality that takes custom lisp code to produce) 
that is unnecessary, and they can't live with this lack.

So now what is left is for me to make a case regarding this basic 
functionality.  I can also include the lisp code I use to fix the 
problem.  All of these facilities are things needed by programmers all 
the time and are just cumbersome in emacs as follows.

The first is "delete line".  Deleting a line is one of the most basic 
functions needed.  It is used all of the time. Having to type ^a^k^k is 
utterly crazy for such a basic function.  It takes two hands and three 
keys!  VI has two keys and one hand.

Yes, I know that emacs can be customized as desired.  And, yes, I know 
about kill-whole-line.  The problem is not what emacs can do, the 
problem is how emacs comes in its default configuration.  Expecting a 
non-lisp programmer to customize emacs before they can easily delete a 
line is crazy and, IMO, has very significantly hurts emacs' adoption 
over the years.  The default emacs configuration should do every common 
function out-of-the-box easily.

Just for the record I use:

(defun kill-line-remainder ()
  "Kills the remainder of the line."
  (interactive)
  (if (not (eolp))
      (let ((beg (point)))
	(end-of-line)
	(delete-region beg (point)))))
(defun kill-current-line ()
  "Kills the current line."
  (interactive)
  (beginning-of-line)
  (kill-line-remainder)
  (if (bobp)
      (delete-char 1)
    (progn
      (delete-backward-char 1)
      (next-line 1)
      (beginning-of-line))))
(global-set-key [f5] 'kill-current-line)
(global-set-key [f6] 'kill-line-remainder)

Note that although it may seem (and in fact may be the case) that this 
functionality could be added easier, be careful.  This code correctly 
handles end-of-file conditions as well as other unusual scenarios.  It 
has been perfected and used over many years.

kill-line-remainder does what you'd expect.  It kills the remainder of 
the line, period.  ^k does different things depending on the situation.

kill-current-line deletes the line you are on with no need to go to the 
beginning of the line first and no weirdness if the line has no 
characters on it.  It is not a matter about doing something logical. It 
is a matter of doing things that are intuitively clear.

Rather then make a case for each function independently, I maintain 
that each function I show is something naturally desired by a 
programmer, easy with VI, and unnecessarily confusing and difficult in 
emacs.

The next function adds a new line after the current line.  No need to 
go to the end of the line first! (VI o)

(defun insert-line-after ()
  "Inserts a new line before the current line."
  (interactive)
  (end-of-line)
  (insert "\n"))
(global-set-key [f8] 'insert-line-after)


Insert line before the current line (VI O)

(defun insert-line-before ()
  "Inserts a new line before the current line."
  (interactive)
  (beginning-of-line)
  (insert "\n")
  (previous-line 1))
(global-set-key [f7] 'insert-line-before)


Scroll screen up or down by one line:

(setq scroll-step 1)
(defun scroll-up-one ()
  "scrolls window up one line."
  (interactive)
  (scroll-up 1))
(defun scroll-down-one ()
  "Scrolls window down one line."
  (interactive)
  (scroll-down 1))
(global-set-key [f1] 'scroll-up-one)
(global-set-key [f2] 'scroll-down-one)


That's it.  I have other functions I use but these represent what I 
believe to be basic and universally needed facilities.  Again, yes, 
emacs does all this. It's just too cumbersome, confusing, and 
irregular.  These work the way a person would intuitively expect them 
to work IMO.

Blake McBride