Re: Emacs learning curve

[Óscar Fuentes]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

[snipped text where I mostly agree]

> OTOH, changing the terms used by long-time users would cause great
> confusion and annoyance.  I don't think you can win this argument if
> you target the names of commands.

I think it is more reasonable to add alias, perhaps make some commands
non-interactive and add new ones with the "new" terms, and replace all
references on the Emacs manual (not the Elisp manual) to use the new
terms.

I don't see why old timers would have a problem with this. After all, if
we expect from every newcomer to learn Emacs-ish, we can expect from the
veterans to learn that Paste means the same as Yank (in case they still
don't know.) Sure, there are technical details, none hard, although
maybe a bit controversial... Oh, wait!

> It would be much easier to get support if you create such a pictorial
> vocabulary for use by new users and non-programmers.  Bonus points for
> making it possible to create a "keyboard macro" using only the mouse,
> translate it to Lisp, and associate the pictures with the appropriate
> Lisp commands.  And of course much of the relevant vocabulary will
> already be present in collections of icons provided by GNOME et al.

Not really, the long term investment should be to teach modern terms to
Emacs, instead of insisting on forcing every newcomer to learn the Emacs
terms.