AceJohnny's Journal: Emacs

Like thousands of geeks before me, I'm learning to use emacs. It is an extremely powerful editor. I've been using other, easier editors previously. There are a couple I like, notably notepad++ on windows, and kate on linux.
Though I am impressed by all that emacs can do and its custumizability, there is one thing I hate: it's user interface.

Emacs was first created by a bunch of geeks (some long-forgotten dudes like a certain Richard M. Stallman), working on powerful mainframes (not exactly, but stay with me here). This was before I was even born.

There computers were quite different in usage from what we have today. There were no user interface guidelines set in stone.

Since then, there has been stuff like IBM's CUA (Common User Access), or Apple's HIG (Human Interface Guidelines).

Emacs does not follow them.

Emacs calls "windows" what we now call "frames". And vice-versa. A "selection" in text is a "region". "cutting" is called "killing". "paste"? "Yank". There's this notion of "buffers", where everybody now has "open files" (What is it? "buffers" aren't necessarily "files"? Well it's close enough!).
Wanna close a file? Woops, ctrl-w just "killed" (cut) your selection. Wanna ctrl-x a piece of text? Woops, that's the all-important primary shortcut.

Honestly, Emacs has all the features a modern editor provides, and enough extra to cure cancer. However, it could use a much-needed update to it's UI terms and shortcuts. It's not impossible, most of its features map cleanly to what exists elsewhere, under another name (as mentioned previously).

It would open emacs up to a million young motivated geeks. Let the old geezers die off.

</rant>