@glyph @hynek intellectually, I feel like I should like Emacs. The underlying idea is closely aligned with ideas I like. But every time I try it, I end up gagging because it has spent *no* effort over the last 30 years to look and behave like *every other app on my desktop*. Or, to the extent it has, it’s a set of carefully crafted customizations in one user’s config. Every tutorial I’ve ever found starts with “relearn all your keyboard shortcuts for page-up”.
Has any of that changed?
@freakboy3742 @hynek No. This is definitely a problem, but it's not like… a mistake. Emacs's set of key bindings has a structure to it, which is sort of like a grammar. This grammar is not compatible with other applications, and if you tried to *make* it compatible, it would be like getting frustrated that calculus is full of weird symbols. Like why say ∫ rather than just writing out "the area of the region bounded by the graph of the function" each time you needed to describe it?
@glyph @hynek Sure - and I get that; but at some point, you need to step back and realize that the grammar has a fundamental problem, and needs to be rethought in the context of the actual lived reality of the rest of existence, instead of trying to pretend that Word and Excel haven’t existed for 30+ years.
Or, at the very least, double down, and actually write a tutorial that is worth a warm bucket of spit for those of us humans who *live* in that reality.
@freakboy3742 @hynek I feel like https://www.spacemacs.org and https://github.com/doomemacs are trying to do this, in different ways, and meeting with some level of success. a few long-time emacsers I know swear by them now, particularly spacemacs
