Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction Subject: Re: Emacs for the Amiga 1000 ? (MicroEmacs?) Message-ID: <1991Jan15.091854.24428@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 15 Jan 91 09:18:54 GMT References: <17399@cbmvax.commodore.com> Distribution: comp Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 77 vinsci@nic.funet.fi (Leonard Norrgard) writes: ----- | If your are using Emacs on other systems as well, then you will not want | to use the CBM version on the extras disk. This is simply because | someone made find-file (^X^F) exit the editor rather than the standard | find-file. (I won't submit a bug report on this, if you read it, fix | it!) ----- andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel) writes: ----- | There are several standards of key sequences for Emacs...one family is | based on Gosling's Emacs. The other is based on GNU. The version on the | 1.3 Extras disk is based on Gosling's style of commands. ----- vinsci@nic.funet.fi (Leonard Norrgard) writes: ----- | Of course. But one of them is more standard than the other is. It is | not Gosling's Emacs, and you know that. ----- andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel) writes: ----- | Just because something is different than what you're use to does not | indicate the presence of a bug. ----- vinsci@nic.funet.fi (Leonard Norrgard) writes: ----- | It is inconsistent with the GNU Emacs on your Unix release. That's a | user interface bug to me. (And of course; who use Gosling's Emacs? :-) | One of the main points with emacs [whether it is the full GNU Emacs or | some subset] is that it looks and works the same way on all the machines | for which it is available, is that too much to ask for? Be nice now, or | I'll send you a bunch of OS bug reports. (OK, I'll send them anyway... | ;-) ----- Well (he harumphed), so long as GNU emacs maintains a standard of binding the backspace key to the help command, effectively crippling half the keyboards in the world, and fails to document any way for a naive user to rebind that key simply and easily to the destructive backspace, I'll have to leave its key bindings as among the more brain-dead decisions in the known computing universe. Note that any attempt to rebind the key interactively is doomed to fail, because you can't even stop it from generating help messages when it's quoted. Frankly, as destructive as that binding is for a keyboard with the delete key away from the main keyset, rebinding it should be the subject of the first paragraph in the GNU emacs manual. I have no intention of _ever_ becoming so expert at the arcana of any editor that I have to reprogram the editor before I can use it. It is, as Humpty Dumpty once said, a matter of who is to be master. It is just too much to expect a touch typist to use the delete key for emacs, and the backspace key for everything else typed. Rotten human engineering counts for a lot, and that one takes the cake. I've sent that message to Stallman at least twice, and his total lack of a repair tells me all I want to know about the chances of "free" software ever being user friendly. The profit motive accomplishes a lot. With this miserable exception, you can rebind the keys to whatever you want, and Gosling's binding was in wide use for years before the GNU project's version became available, so deciding which is the true standard is a) pointless and b) meaningless, and c) a religious question anyway. Kent, the man from xanth. -- Yes, I'm sure there's some simple way to do it, but in three years of using the editor, I never found the trick, never got over being mad about the stupidity of the binding long enough to want to try that hard.