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0 pointsfluffything5y ago0 comments

> may as well not exist if it is not easily discoverable.

But it is easily discoverable ?

I literally just do M-x and can I get a buffer open with _all_ emacs commands and their explanation, and can do a fuzzy search on that, e.g., so if I type "M-x align re" I get only one command highlighted that can just execute "align-regexp".

That's the main thing I like about emacs. I don't have to remember a million shortcuts, just what things are possible, and then I just type a description of what I want to do and hit enter and that's it.

A GUI / having to use the mouse would push me completely out of "the zone".

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JetSetWilly5y ago

That's cool if you can remember roughly what the command is called. For example, I wanted to format some XMl in a buffer. In a GUI, I'm fairly sure I could find this easily, in emacs it is "go to google" and find out that you want sgml-petty-print or whatever. So a bunch of M-x searching for "format" is hopeless.

Emacs tends to have its own names for many concepts, making things even more obtuse.

BeetleB5y ago

In about 70-80% of the cases, using ido or helm, with some guesses on what the command name may contain, is enough to find me what I need.

But yes, to be frank, my productivity in Emacs really took off once I started memorizing things with flashcards. I currently have 603 cards for Emacs (including elisp).

(And telling a newbie that would cause a lot of despair!)[2]

The other thing that really helped is I started using/making hydras.[1] So now when I encounter a new, interesting mode, instead of memorizing lots of command names or keybindings, I just build my own custom menus.

[1] https://github.com/abo-abo/hydra

[2] But it really shouldn't. Emacs, with all its packages, and modes, is like a language with all its libraries, and not just the standard ones. Remembering all the commands/keybindings is akin to expecting someone to know all the APIs in all the libraries. It's OK if you don't. Most people don't.

fluffythingOP5y ago

> That's cool if you can remember roughly what the command is called. > > [ ... ] > > In a GUI, I'm fairly sure I could find this easily, in emacs it is "go to google" and find out that you want sgml-petty-print or whatever.

I just yank into a new buffer, set it to xml mode, "M-x indent" reveals the command to format xml (indent-region or indent-buffer or something like that), enter, yank it back. Done.

In an editor with a gui, I would just go to "Help -> Search" and do pretty much the same, which would reveal the menu item to click to achieve something. I find emacs ido/helm workflow for this much better. Never need to memorize anything.

jcynix5y ago

Microsoft's office products are mostly GUI centered. But I rarely can easily find ways to accomplish things there and instead get lost in their GUI, which sometimes looks like a twisty maze of little passages all different. So "GUI" isn't a panacea for ease of use IMO.

In emacs I can use "apropos" (i.e. "c-h a") or "c-h v" for example to search for ways to accomplish what I'd like to do.

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