Re: cua-mode and the tutorial

[Richard Stallman]

    > I don't see much point in teaching an absolute beginner standard Emacs
    > if that is not what he will get when he runs Emacs normally.
    >   
    Maybe this is wishful thinking? That new users will use Emacs standard 
    key bindings only? It is hard for me to believe they will.

New users won't know about nonstandard bindings.  Until they learn
to customize, they will use the standard ones.

The exception is when someone starts a new user off with nontrivial
customizations.  We want to discourage that.

    Is it not plausible that they have been using CUA keys and want to use 
    that in Emacs?

I don't know, but people who start others off with Emacs are not
supposed to customize it for them.

The tutorial is written to teach the standard bindings.  To teach
the use of Emacs with the CUA keys is a different job, one which
the current tutorial is not designed to do.

    Is it not quite likely that the person who set up Emacs is the user 
    himself? He might have read some advice on how to get started and 
    customized Emacs to use CUA mode.

It seems rather unlikely.