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Bad NEWS, Emacs

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Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#41

Post by lemper »

raverbashing wrote: post #39
devnull3 wrote: post #11

I am a Vim guy. Can someone explain what exactly is broken?

The Emacs development process No, I'm not kidding There is no focus, there's no objective, it seems the louder ideas win but there's no final idea of what Emacs should look like or what/how it should do or not That's why such breaking changes get in without questioning (and even why they were using such functionality as registers in the first place)

yea seems right. tfa says that thierry didn't accept input at all from other maintainers. that's not good in my eyes.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#42

Post by monsieurbanana »

broscillator wrote: post #34
entropie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> emacs is changing very specific behavior, that was intended, to do something new now No? It changes how an existing command behaves. > This commit crippled all user interaction with Emacs registers, turning commands such as C-x r s, once smooth and frictionless, into a cumbersome and painful mess. Concretely, instead of just typing the key for the register you want to operate on, you now get a fully blown minibuffe…

with all due respect c-x r s sounds far from smooth and frictionless to me

If you're so used to type C-x that you don't even register it, like most emacs users, then it's just pressing "r s" for "register save".

It's not terrible, and the mnemonic is sound. If you don't like it, perfectly valid opinion, you're just not made for emacs' default behavior.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#43

Post by smitty1e »

janice1999 wrote: post #25
pilgrim0 wrote: post #14

I don’t fully understand the nature/impact of the change but this conflict seems so minor to me. Like, people on both sides display the same level of entitlement but for different reasons, and they all think they have their are “right”. Hum, no, for outsiders you all appear stubborn and lacking ability to compromise. “Oh my gosh, I’ll have to press 1 extra key now, this project is doomed!”, “no no no, this little cha…

I disagree. As a developer I think breaking literally decades old workflows for users without notice or any level of concern is a bad thing. For a program with users so reliant on muscle memory, I think the impact is far worse.

The friction seemed less about the change as such as in the unilateral delivery.

Even good change (whether or not this is) needs a gentle transition.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#44

Post by jsw97 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #23
ajross wrote: post #13

It's a good rant, but it probably doesn't help its case that it doesn't stop to explain what the feature it's talking about actually is. Emacs registers are a really, really old abstraction. Registers are like separate clipboards, you can put stuff there and pull it out. And there are 62 of them (each associated with a core ASCII symbol: [a-zA-Z0-9]), giving you a lot of flexibilty and a very quick keyboard interface…

‘Default bindings’ sounds like it’s configurable to be different. Is it?

It is not. That approach was tried and rejected, hence the problem.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#45

Post by ta988 »

pilgrim0 wrote: post #14

I don’t fully understand the nature/impact of the change but this conflict seems so minor to me. Like, people on both sides display the same level of entitlement but for different reasons, and they all think they have their are “right”. Hum, no, for outsiders you all appear stubborn and lacking ability to compromise. “Oh my gosh, I’ll have to press 1 extra key now, this project is doomed!”, “no no no, this little cha…

This is something that should just have been made as a new function not replacing an existing one. That way users have a choice between speed when they know what register to use and help when they don't.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#47

Post by sgbeal »

pilgrim0 wrote: post #14

I don’t fully understand the nature/impact of the change but this conflict seems so minor to me. Like, people on both sides display the same level of entitlement but for different reasons, and they all think they have their are “right”. Hum, no, for outsiders you all appear stubborn and lacking ability to compromise. “Oh my gosh, I’ll have to press 1 extra key now, this project is doomed!”, “no no no, this little cha…

> “Oh my gosh, I’ll have to press 1 extra key now ... "

is a genuine usability tragedy for folks who have 25+ years of muscle memory involved. There are no small number of emacs users, myself included, who fall into that category.

> "... this project is doomed!”

obviously it's not quite that bad, but any change to long-standing muscle memory is going to send countless users down a rabbit hole looking to undo that change.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#48

Post by jason_stelzer »

ajross wrote: post #13

It's a good rant, but it probably doesn't help its case that it doesn't stop to explain what the feature it's talking about actually is. Emacs registers are a really, really old abstraction. Registers are like separate clipboards, you can put stuff there and pull it out. And there are 62 of them (each associated with a core ASCII symbol: [a-zA-Z0-9]), giving you a lot of flexibilty and a very quick keyboard interface…

It’s basically global uac-mode for all buffers without the ability to turn it off. If it weren’t true it would be laughable.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#49

Post by addicted »

coldtea wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Problems with a large open source project are never about a single individual.

Individuals will make mistakes and have wrong opinions. The problem here appears to lie with the larger eMacs development community.

Re: Bad NEWS, Emacs

#50

Post by xhevahir »

motoboi wrote: post #40
Zelphyr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned a new feature of Vim. Thank you!

vimtutor is absolutely worth the time

I don't think that feature is covered in vimtutor. As far as I can tell vimtutor mentions registers only once in passing and buffers not at all.
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