Why I learned emacs was Re: the glass tty model of human-computer interaction

[wlestes@wlestes.uncg.edu]

A couple years ago, I used whatever word processor and text editor I
could get my hands on. Sometimes this was eve on VMS, WordPerfect on
DOS, qedit on DOS. Then because I was in a group project in a computer
architecture class and because the campus runs some unix boxes and
because the djgpp environment is free software, I downloaded
emacs--all i think 7 floppies worth of binaries and elisp sources--and
took the plunge. I was using jaws on dos and telnetting into the unix
machines at school and DOS with a screenreader at home to access
emacs. After about an hour or two of reading the on line tutorial, I
got the hang of emacs, at least enough to function. I had no trouble
understanding the logic of emacs commands or figuring out how to do
what I wanted to do. I *stayed* with emacs because it was more
powerful than anything else I was using at the time. I think it was
the compilation from inside emacs that really proved the point.

> I, personally, do not like the EMACS style of editor, although, due to its
> support of speech output, I can readily understand its attractiveness to most
> blind people. One of the problems with EMACS is that many of its functions do a
> lot of unpredictable things, which, to my mind, makes it very difficult for a
> blind person to truly be sure of what has happened in response to a given
> command. EMACS relies on its user having a full view of the screen at all
> times, which, whether braille or speech is being used, is not a presentation
> mode which lends itself to easy use by a blind person. Another problem with
> EMACS is that its key sequences have not been designed with orthogonality in
> mind, so that one must rely on intensive research, rather than on intuition,
> when trying to do something new.

orthogonality with respect to what? I dont follow you here. I am
"functionally" blind with respect to (most things including) computing
and I have no trouble conceptualizing what emacs is doing. Did you
have something in mind with respect to your comment that emacs
requires a full knowledge of the layout of the screen?

> The draw to EMACS for those who rely on speech is that it has the best
> interactive speech support to date, which, even now, is still undergoing
> further development. EMACS also enables its user to start any host command from
> within it, which immediately makes all host commands speech-usable, without the
> user even having to learn anything new. These very powerful assets will have
> the predictable effect of causing the user to gladly put up with EMACS'
> inconviences, because a blind person is always having to accept what is less
> than perfect simply because significantly greater freedom is worth the payment
> of that small price.

true enough, but for me the logic of switching to linux was more like
this:

djgpp is great, but it aint the "real" thing.
emacs has the best support on linux.
I already know emacs.

and now that I have linux natively support (well, ok, we have to
overlook the dec speech synthesizer), I can develop software that *I*
want. *smile*

> since I believe that one should always use the best tool for the job at hand, I

amen to this line. whatever our preferences, this is the real
consideration.

> also like PICO. I use VIM for writing/fixing software, editing data files,
> etc., i.e. for editing anything that is of a line-oriented nature. I use PICO,
> on the other hand, for editing anything that is of a text-oriented nature, e.g.
> this reply. PICO offers automatic line wrapping and paragraph rejustification,
> which are essential when editing textual data. VIM offers both of these
> functions as well, but in a more difficult to use way.

but in emacs, these modes are both present with several ways of
switching between them. It can be done automatically with a few lines
of elisp in the init file or manually by typing some commands.

> I shall conclude these thoughts by declaring my gripe with all of the visual
> editors which I have encountered so far ... They are all case-sensitive! I

One could write a mode in emacs to be case insensitive when issuing
editing commands. Probably start with one of the vi modes as a base...