From: Chris Capel
Subject: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <10q9083k8mdo1ab@corp.supernews.com>
Hi all,

I've spent the past evening hacking on SLIME. I was roused into an Emacs
frenzy by a building frustration and a straw: finding the
slime-indent-and-complete-symbol function. I had never really been able to
use complete as much as I do in Visual Studio.NET because I couldn't find a
good keybinding for it (C-SPC in VS). TAB was taken. TAB plus any modifiers
(besides AltGr and Super, which I don't know how to set up) are taken up by
GNOME. So things were getting tense. And seeing that one new function, and
the obvious and massive simplification of typing multiple-value-bind
incited me to fix about 100 other things that were nagging me about my
Emacs environment.

My fix-it-up-er attitude was so strong that I even replaced my old buffer
management keybindings (the defaults) with the bs.el ones. Waaay cool. So
now that I realize that Emacs doesn't *have* to be incredibly hard on your
fingers and oft-times frustrating. I'm starting to believe, just a little,
the "common wisdom" among Lispers that Emacs roolz. I'm just beginning to
understand that Emacs *demands* to be customized before it's useful for
programming. And I'm wondering why distros don't provide more goodies in
their default .emacs.

But how can I know how efficient and wizard-like you can get in Emacs when I
don't know about anyone's keybindings? So I have a proposition (partly
inspired by Kenny's exposition of Ctrl-Mouse2 in the C++ thread): Show off
your incredible .emacs environment by uploading your own personal
customization file (especially if you use SLIME) with the topic marker
*(Emacs customizations). If you like, describe some of your favorite key
combinations or work-saving habits that don't show up in a .emacs file. I'm
sure all of us newbies will be grateful.

http://www.cliki.net/Emacs%20customizations.

Hope to see you there!

Chris Capel

From: Trent Buck
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <20041125003832.595b9d0d@harpo.marx>
Quoth Chris Capel on or about 2004-11-24:
> good keybinding for it (C-SPC in VS). TAB was taken. TAB plus any modifiers
> (besides AltGr and Super, which I don't know how to set up) 

Something like:
	(local-set-key (quote [s-tab]) (quote self-insert-command))

Use M-x local-set-key to find out the name of the binding, and C-x ESC
ESC to get the elisp for it.

> And I'm wondering why distros don't provide more goodies in
> their default .emacs.

Because your goodies are different to mine.  
M-x customize-apropos is pretty useful.
Debian provides some neat stuff in the emacs-goodies-el package.

-t
From: Chris Capel
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <10qb66ptaql07b3@corp.supernews.com>
Trent Buck wrote:

> Quoth Chris Capel on or about 2004-11-24:
>> And I'm wondering why distros don't provide more goodies in
>> their default .emacs.
> 
> Because your goodies are different to mine.
> M-x customize-apropos is pretty useful.
> Debian provides some neat stuff in the emacs-goodies-el package.

I'd wager that the single greatest improvement to Emacs' user-friendliness
that could be made now is to include (pc-selection-mode t) and a few other
windows-like keybindings in the default configuration in every distro.
People that know enough not to like those keybindings would know enough to
be able to disable them. And newbies wouldn't be scared off.

Chris Capel
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsh0iqusxpqzri1@mjolner.upc.no>
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:33:22 -0600, Chris Capel <······@iba.nktech.net>  
wrote:

> Trent Buck wrote:
>
>> Quoth Chris Capel on or about 2004-11-24:
>>> And I'm wondering why distros don't provide more goodies in
>>> their default .emacs.
>>
>> Because your goodies are different to mine.
>> M-x customize-apropos is pretty useful.
>> Debian provides some neat stuff in the emacs-goodies-el package.
>
> I'd wager that the single greatest improvement to Emacs'  
> user-friendliness
> that could be made now is to include (pc-selection-mode t) and a few  
> other
> windows-like keybindings in the default configuration in every distro.
> People that know enough not to like those keybindings would know enough  
> to
> be able to disable them. And newbies wouldn't be scared off.
>
> Chris Capel

In version 20.3 it is available under Options.CUA cut and paste.
This is a great improvement over previous versions where I had to
'manually' acquire the package, install it and enable it.
As it is it seems simple enough to me. Not much more quirky
than any other editor.

-- 
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsh0i1fttpqzri1@mjolner.upc.no>
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:48:20 +0100, John Thingstad  
<··············@chello.no> wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:33:22 -0600, Chris Capel <······@iba.nktech.net>  
> wrote:
>
>> Trent Buck wrote:
>>
>>> Quoth Chris Capel on or about 2004-11-24:
>>>> And I'm wondering why distros don't provide more goodies in
>>>> their default .emacs.
>>>
>>> Because your goodies are different to mine.
>>> M-x customize-apropos is pretty useful.
>>> Debian provides some neat stuff in the emacs-goodies-el package.
>>
>> I'd wager that the single greatest improvement to Emacs'  
>> user-friendliness
>> that could be made now is to include (pc-selection-mode t) and a few  
>> other
>> windows-like keybindings in the default configuration in every distro.
>> People that know enough not to like those keybindings would know enough  
>> to
>> be able to disable them. And newbies wouldn't be scared off.
>>
>> Chris Capel
>
> In version 20.3 it is available under Options.CUA cut and paste.
> This is a great improvement over previous versions where I had to
> 'manually' acquire the package, install it and enable it.
> As it is it seems simple enough to me. Not much more quirky
> than any other editor.
>

Oh and the reason you dont enable it by default is that you also need to
know how to switch it off. Remember that all emacs mode specific commands
are bound to Ctrl-c. Moving this would alienate most current users of  
emacs.
And if you are seriously going to use emacs you will need the mode  
commands.


-- 
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
From: Chris Capel
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <10qb9pr20s3kmf6@corp.supernews.com>
John Thingstad wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:48:20 +0100, John Thingstad
> <··············@chello.no> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:33:22 -0600, Chris Capel <······@iba.nktech.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I'd wager that the single greatest improvement to Emacs'
>>> user-friendliness
>>> that could be made now is to include (pc-selection-mode t) and a few
>>> other
>>> windows-like keybindings in the default configuration in every distro.
>>> People that know enough not to like those keybindings would know enough
>>> to
>>> be able to disable them. And newbies wouldn't be scared off.
>>>
>>> Chris Capel
>>
>> In version 20.3 it is available under Options.CUA cut and paste.
>> This is a great improvement over previous versions where I had to
>> 'manually' acquire the package, install it and enable it.
>> As it is it seems simple enough to me. Not much more quirky
>> than any other editor.
> 
> Oh and the reason you dont enable it by default is that you also need to
> know how to switch it off. Remember that all emacs mode specific commands
> are bound to Ctrl-c. Moving this would alienate most current users of
> emacs.
> And if you are seriously going to use emacs you will need the mode
> commands.

When I say "a few other windows-like keybindings" I don't mean anything as
drastic as making C-x mean cut and C-c mean copy. Those two keystrokes are
central to emacs. But in other instances, where the current keystroke is
bound to some weird command and it's commonly used in Windows editors for a
more common command, it might be a good idea.

Chris Capel
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsh0i6zhnpqzri1@mjolner.upc.no>
correction. That was supposed to be emacs version 21.3

-- 
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
From: Edgar Denny
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <Jtapd.146067$R05.68247@attbi_s53>
Chris Capel stipulated:

> Hi all,
>
> I've spent the past evening hacking on SLIME. I was roused into an Emacs
> frenzy by a building frustration and a straw: finding the
> slime-indent-and-complete-symbol function. I had never really been able to
> use complete as much as I do in Visual Studio.NET because I couldn't find a
> good keybinding for it (C-SPC in VS). TAB was taken. TAB plus any modifiers
> (besides AltGr and Super, which I don't know how to set up) are taken up by
> GNOME. So things were getting tense. And seeing that one new function, and
> the obvious and massive simplification of typing multiple-value-bind
> incited me to fix about 100 other things that were nagging me about my
> Emacs environment.
>
> My fix-it-up-er attitude was so strong that I even replaced my old buffer
> management keybindings (the defaults) with the bs.el ones. Waaay cool. So
> now that I realize that Emacs doesn't *have* to be incredibly hard on your
> fingers and oft-times frustrating. I'm starting to believe, just a little,
> the "common wisdom" among Lispers that Emacs roolz. I'm just beginning to
> understand that Emacs *demands* to be customized before it's useful for
> programming. And I'm wondering why distros don't provide more goodies in
> their default .emacs.
>
> But how can I know how efficient and wizard-like you can get in Emacs when I
> don't know about anyone's keybindings? So I have a proposition (partly
> inspired by Kenny's exposition of Ctrl-Mouse2 in the C++ thread): Show off
> your incredible .emacs environment by uploading your own personal
> customization file (especially if you use SLIME) with the topic marker
> *(Emacs customizations). If you like, describe some of your favorite key
> combinations or work-saving habits that don't show up in a .emacs file. I'm
> sure all of us newbies will be grateful.
>
> http://www.cliki.net/Emacs%20customizations.
>
> Hope to see you there!
>
> Chris Capel

A good place to to discuss emacs customizations it the emacs wiki,

http://www.emacswiki.org

Edgar.
From: St?phane Perrot
Subject: Re: Lispers and Emacs
Date: 
Message-ID: <9c572185.0411250338.193d103e@posting.google.com>
Chris Capel <······@iba.nktech.net> wrote in message news:<···············@corp.supernews.com>...

> TAB was taken. 

That should not prevent you from using it to execute the command you prefer
(unless you think the command actually bound to it is more useful that complete).

IMHO, tab BELONGS to completion, so one of the first thing I do in a 
new Emacs (actually, an XEmacs or LispWorks Editor) in the following :

(define-key foo-mode-map [(tab)] 'dabbrev-expand)

and then I rebind the previously bound command to some other keychord, for example :

(define-key foo-mode-map [(control tab)] 'indent-for-tab-command)

[
In LW Editor, that is for example:
(editor:bind-key "Dynamic Completion"   #\Tab)
(editor:bind-key "Complete Symbol"      #\S-Tab)
]

> (besides AltGr and Super, which I don't know how to set up) 
In xemacs, super is for example :

(define-key erlang-mode-map [(super control a)] 'erlang-beginning-of-clause)

but see define-key built-in doc for more explanations...



Happy Emacking !

St�phane Perrot