On Jun 21, 10:09 am, Robert Uhl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You're quite right. Windows/Mac user interfaces are so clunky that they > massively hamper productivity. Emacs, OTOH, enables it. For example, > C-s is search forward; C-r is search backward ('reverse'); C-M-s is > search forward for a regular expression; C-M-r is search backward for a > regular expression. A Windows or Mac editor would have C-s for save, > and that's it. It might have C-f for find, but it'd pop up a dialogue > instead of offering an interactive search, causing a mental context > switch. Searching would interrupt one's flow of thought rather than > being part of it.
Being a primarily windows user, I have to question your assertion that using ctrl-f for find causes a "mental context switch". For me, in 90% of the windows applications, finding something is as simple as ctrl-f, the phrase, hit enter. Not terribly different from your set of commands. The biggest difference is that if I need to use a Find feature I might not often use, I have a visual interface to all the related search functions. On the other hand, a terminal program would necessitate a memory search at best, or a trip to the help pages at worst. The best part of my windows knowledge is that it's transferable to most (all?) of the applications I work with. Find is usually ctrl-f. Undo is ctrl-z. Save is ctrl-s, yadda yadda. Such knowledge is rarely transferable from terminal programs in my experience -- what may be true for one program (emacs) is wildly different in another program (vi), and useless in yet another (pico). On the other hand, I can move from notepad to Word to Open Office to Notepad++, based on the availability at the terminal I'm on, with little difficulty. For the record, I use VIM when in terminals. Emacs isn't available on our *nix boxes. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list