"Richard M. Stallman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > whenever I find myself doing a demonstration of Emacs capabilities and > features, I find myself using keyboard commands. That is not helpful > to onlookers who just see magic happening. > > So I have to force myself to use the mouse. > > I don't understand how using the mouse makes things clearer.
It is visible on the computer screen. A demonstration nowadays usually consists of having a laptop connected to a beamer. Using the keyboard makes the screen change "magically" which tells people "masters will be able to work this, not I myself". Using the menus shows what one is doing on the screen, and it suggests that it is easy to find out what to do. > Is it that you use menus to invoke the commands? How inconvenient. Definitely. That's why I want to use the keyboard, but have it look like I would be using the mouse. Which also shows the keyboard shortcuts in the menus. > I used to teach classes in editing with Emacs, and people would > watch a big screen acting as a secondary monitor for my computer. I > would tell them what I was typing as I typed it, and go slow enough > that they could follow what I did and what effect it had. That's for plain tutorials. I am more interested in frontal talks where just I myself am doing the work. The time slots I have available on typical conferences are not sufficient for teaching people to do everything that is possible within Emacs for writing LaTeX texts. I am happy if I manage just to _show_ it. > whenever Emacs finds that I used a key sequence from the current > major mode (it should be configurable which keymaps it consults > for a particular demo) that is also available as a menu, Emacs > should fake myself using the mouse: > > Why not just display the keys you type in another window? > That would also enable people to follow what you are doing. > It would be easier to implement, and it would show them > a good method to imitate, instead of a bad one. The menus show the keyboard shortcuts. Having two frames/windows to watch will probably cost more concentration than following the visual lead of a moving mouse cursor. I am not saying that a demonstration mode showing keyboard shortcuts in a separate window would not also be a good idea: particularly for tutorials it might be pretty good, particularly as people can take their time typing the keysequences off (as long as they don't disappear, but are kept as a sort of a log), something which is not possible when trying to demonstrate using the mouse. However, for a frontal demonstration, the mouse thingy still appears more appealing to me, in particular when trying to recruit new users. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ Emacs-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel
