Re: basic question: going back to dired

[Tim X]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 14:34, Miles Bader <miles.bader@necel.com> wrote:
>
>> It's not that "keybinding" is somehow extra good, it's that "shortcut"
>> is unusually bad.
>
> Agreed. I don't like Xah Lee's proposals. But I think that he's right
> that Emacs' use of outdated terminology sometimes hampers adoption by
> new users.
>
so what? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but what does it really
matter if new users have a bit of a learning curve? Why should emacs
appear to be just like any other text editor? While probably sounding
provocative, how many new uses who are not prepared to learn emacs
terminology are actually going to contribute anything? If they don't
contribute anything, what does it matter if there is only 1 a year or
100 a week? 

Taking things in another direction, could it not be that as emacs is
significantly different in approach, functionality and extensibility
than nearly all other editors, might not a different terminology
actually help new uses grasp that this is not just another editor?
There could be an argument that making users learn from scratch and with
different terminology will help because it makes them adopt a new
mindset and stops them from comparing it to what they already know?

Tim




-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au