A more modest proposal (Was: Emacs learning curve)

[Daniel Colascione]

On 7/17/10 10:51 AM, Chong Yidong wrote:

> No, having CUA mode on by default is off the table.

Agreed, but there are a few less disruptive ideas that are still worth
considering:

1) cua-selection-mode, or its moral equivalent

cua-selection-mode doesn't play games C-c and C-x or interfere with any
normal Emacs keybinding, but it does give users bindings for
control-insert, shift-insert, and shift-delete.

These keystrokes perform "copy", "paste", and "cut", respectively, and
the same keystrokes do similar things in other CUA applications --- it's
be easy to tell users, "unlike most programs, Emacs does not use C-c,
C-x, and C-v for copy and paste: Emacs was old when these bindings were
new, and they're used for something very different in Emacs. But Emacs
*does* support using Control-Insert, Shift-Delete, and Shift-Insert for
copy, cut, and paste. So do most other programs; learn to use these keys
instead."

2) More descriptive minibuffer messages for key chords

Right now, pressing C-c by itself simply displays "C-c -"; C-x is
similar. Novice users would benefit if this message read something like
"C-c - <waiting for command - C-h for help>" instead so that they notice
faster that C-c and C-x are very different in Emacs.

3) Natural binding for C-z

Bind C-z by default to this function:

(defun undo-or-suspend-emacs ()
  "Undo if we're in a windowing system, or suspend emacs if we're in a TTY"
  (interactive)
  (setq this-command (if window-system 'undo 'suspend-emacs))
  (call-interactively this-command))


Adopting this binding will ensure Emacs has the most natural and common
behavior on C-z for a given environment. Besides, not much of value is
lost: why bother with C-z in a windowing system when the system probably
provides its own idiomatic way of minimizing a window?