Re: basic question: going back to dired

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:46, Phil Carmody
<thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Xah <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:

>> These terms are irrelevant to the users of a software application.
>
> Blatant assertion I disagree with completely.

In which way the use of terms like "keybinding" or "buffer" is
relevant to the *users* of a software application?

>> As a user of a text editor, he works with files.
>
> Blatant assertion I disagree with completely. As a user of a text
> editor, I work with text. And I want it neatly buffered for me.
> I may occasionally load some of the text from a file, and I may
> occasionally save some of the text to a file, but the majority
> of the buffers that I use never undergo either.

It is true that the user of a text editor works with text. It is also
true, I think, that most text is saved to a file, though nowadays I
suppose there's also a fair amount that is cut&paste'd into another
application, a web form, etc.

Emacs is not a text editor (exclusively): from eshell to dired to BBDB
to Gnus, many things can be done that do not match the text editor
profile; and for those, certainly many buffers are used that do not
correspond to a file in the filesystem. But I think it would be hard
to argue that, in its use as a *text editor*, common users have a
majority of buffers which are not associated to (and saved into) a
file at one point or another...

  Juanma