Re: Suggestion: Mapping of M-g should be goto-line

[David Kastrup]

Danilo Segan <address@hidden> writes:

> Today at 13:27, David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> > Danilo Segan <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >> For "average joe", we want to make them learn the better way.
> >
> > No.  We want them to be able to use Emacs productively.  
> 
> I thought "better way" is a way of being more productive.

You are weaseling.  We are talking about "make them learn the better
way", and doing that the hard way, by obstructing other options.  And
that is only a way of being more productive if
a) they did not actually need the method you are obstructing
b) they don't need the functionality so often that the cost of
learning is not higher than the cost of doing it in the simplistic
way.

We don't gain anything by making Emacs unusable for people that don't
bow to our idea of what they should be forced to learn.

> They can be 'productive' also if they count lines one-by-one, and
> jump to the wanted line that way, but it's certainly not a "better
> way"

So should we try somehow to make it impossible for users to count
lines one-by-one if they want to?

> > One does not do this by artificial deficiencies.  That an
> > experienced user will often be able to avoid using goto-line my
> > more involved procedures does not mean that it does not have its
> > place.  And in particular, the user will not magically discover
> > useful alternatives just because goto-line is hard to use.
> 
> Indeed.  That's why useful alternatives need to be better exposed.

But this is not what we are talking about right now.  We are talking
about the M-g keybinding.

>  If you read my mails, you'd notice that that is what I actually
> asked for.  You may notice that I mentioned that (server-start)
> would be better as a default

That will buy the user exactly squat, since he still needs to read up
on Emacs-server in order to use the functionality.  So even if it is a
good idea for every user to have (server-start) in his .emacs file, it
is useless to do this automatically, since its presence in the default
Emacs startup will not make the user _use_ this feature.

> (there're probably security and other implications, so I'm not
> saying to take it as is now), and that I recommended M-g for
> next-error, and C-x ` for goto-line, because the former is (or at
> least should be, IMO) more useful.

But M-g is much more mnemonic for goto-line.  I don't mind finding a
better keybinding than C-x ` for next-error, but M-g is an obvious
choice for goto-line.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum