From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (qmail 4420 invoked from network); 14 Dec 1998 14:59:11 -0000 Received: from mail.redhat.com (199.183.24.239) by lists.redhat.com with SMTP; 14 Dec 1998 14:59:11 -0000 Received: from wlestes.uncg.edu (wlestes.uncg.edu [152.13.173.71]) by mail.redhat.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA10094 for ; Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:50:38 -0500 From: wlestes@wlestes.uncg.edu Received: (from wlestes@localhost) by wlestes.uncg.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) id KAA01739; Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:50:41 -0500 Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:50:41 -0500 Message-Id: <199812141550.KAA01739@wlestes.uncg.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: wlestes.uncg.edu: wlestes set sender to wlestes@wlestes.uncg.edu using -f To: blinux-list@redhat.com In-reply-to: (message from Dave Mielke on Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:13:56 -0500 (EST)) Subject: Why I learned emacs was Re: the glass tty model of human-computer interaction References: List-Id: 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...