* Paul Johnson (baloo@ursine.dyndns.org) [020801 02:48]: > On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 11:08:50PM -0400, Patrick Wiseman wrote: > > Perhaps - but I have a lousy short-term memory and nano/pico have the most > > often used commands sitting there at the bottom of the screen. And a > > blank page in an editor strikes me as "intuitively" expecting one to enter > > text. I really have no idea what to do with a text editor which starts > > out with _content_ in its opening page. > > This messed with me at first, until I thought for a moment and thought > "start a new buffer, stupid!" It worked...maybe emacs is like my brain... Right. It's definitely better there. I remember freshman year in Soda Hall when I got into emacs and couldn't get out. "WTF is all this C-x garbage?" I think the expanded introductory text listed in newer versions of emacs is a Good Thing. Of course, you can also just start typing, and it disappears and you end up in the *scratch* buffer, which also has an explanation of what this buffer is for and how you should go about creating a file. It ain't perfect, but emacs is scary enough that a few pointers here and there go a long way to helping the newbie. Heh. I also remember getting into vi and being totally clueless back on my first shell account back in middle school! Bad times... Of course, now I can't live without vim. Once you learn a little bit about it (and about regexes), the power kicks in. Vineet -- http://www.doorstop.net/ -- http://www.eff.org/
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