Invisible wrote:
> My God... The Windows native port is a 37 MB download! O_O

	They have a Windows port?

	Emacs is great on UNIX. On other OS's - no idea.

> Not content with merely being a text editor, it also tries to be a
> newsreader, web browser, file manager, calendar, and even a Tetris
> clone. Unfortunately, from the screenshots I've seen, it does none of
> these things very well.

	Know a better newsreader than gnus? Or for that matter, even a mail
reader better than gnus and/or VM?

> Does anybody know what the hell "C-u 10 C-f" is actually supposed to
> mean? What the heck is a "meta key"? Why are cut and past called kill
> and yank? The list of questions goes on and on.

	I believe it means to do C-f many, many times. Don't know for sure as
I'm not (yet) a real emacs user.

	Meta key is a key your keyboard lacks. On many keyboards, Alt works as
a suitable replacement. Barring that, hitting and releasing Esc should
work.

	As for kill and yank, do realize that Emacs is old. I'm not sure cut
and paste was common editor parlance in those days.

> In spite of the hiddeous UI and cryptic controls, I might almost have
> tried Emacs if it wasn't for the huge size of the download. Clearly I'm
> going to have to wait until I get home to try it out - if I bother at
> all...

	My experience with emacs is that the best (and perhaps only) way to
learn it is to go cold turkey on it (or rather, on everything else) for
a while. I _didn't_ do that when I tried learning it years ago, which is
why I never properly learned it (other than the very basics).

	Most of my coding experience was in IDE's. I'm tired of them now. Even
worse is when you want to code in some language that doesn't have an
IDE. My first impulse was to actually learn SciTe. But I then just
figure I may as well go all the way into emacs (especially given that
I'm tired of mutt and gnus or VM may do a better job for me). I dug up
my copy of the Emacs book (O'Reilly) and read through it a few weeks
ago. It's mind boggling, but I have no idea how it compares to SciTe.

	My goal is not to be a casual user, but somewhat of a power user. If I
want to do anything, I should know it well enough to do it if Emacs
provides native capabilities, or to extend it with Lisp.

Step 1: Set my default editor in mutt to be emacs.
Step 2: Try to start using emacs for HTML, Javascript, Python and LaTeX
docs.
Step 3: Switch to gnus and use it for email and these newsgroups.

	No idea when I'll start Step 1.<G>

	

-- 
A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts.


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