Re: Emacs learning curve

[Ivan Andrus]

Oops, I had meant to send the original to the list.

On Jul 23, 2010, at 8:57 AM, Tassilo Horn wrote:

> On Thursday 22 July 2010 22:33:16 Ivan Andrus wrote:
> 
>>> No, but at least it's true for me.  There's some mode that records
>>> key / command frequencies.  Use it for a while and see how tiny the
>>> command fraction is compared to `self-insert-command'.  Then add
>>> some time for thinking before writing to the calculation, and you'll
>>> see that the time needed for typing command key bindings is totally
>>> out of relevance.
> 
> I have to admit that this suggestion was made out of a gut-feeling.  So
> now, I got and enabled command-frequency.el, too.  Currently, here're
> the results of my first 5 minutes (only reading mail/news and replying
> to you):
> 
>    241   45.99%  self-insert-command
>    116   22.14%  gnus-summary-scroll-up
>     36    6.87%  next-line
>     22    4.20%  delete-backward-char
>     20    3.82%  kill-line
>     16    3.05%  gnus-summary-catchup-and-exit
>     16    3.05%  gnus-topic-select-group
>     11    2.10%  previous-line
>      6    1.15%  minibuffer-complete
> ...
> 
>> I must say that I was shocked myself when I looked at it.  I thought
>> self-insert-command would be 50-60% for me, but apparently I do even
>> less typing than I thought (though my usage recently has been a bit
>> that way):
>> 
>>   7651   21.06%  self-insert-command
>>   4475   12.31%  next-line
>>   2756    7.58%  previous-line
>>   1124    3.09%  org-self-insert-command
>> ...
>> 
>> I wonder what others see.
> 
> I think it could be a benefit to revamp this package so that it sends
> statistics to some server.  In addition, it should record how a command
> was executed (M-x, or with <key>) and in which minor/major mode.  That
> would allow spotting frequently used commands with non-ergonomic
> bindings.

I completely agree.

> At least the tops of our statistics are all accessible with one key
> (with or without modifier).

Indeed.  And I think that's the most important thing.  Of course we might use 
them more _because_ they have simple key bindings.

-Ivan