EMACS is a text editor, that's about all I know about it. Today I was using subversion source control in OSX. I did a simple commit, and bang, up pops emacs wanting to type a commit message. I didn't know it was emacs at the time, it was just some kind of editor. I didn't need a (useful?) comment, so I just wanted to quit. That's when I got annoyed. I thought that Microsoft had the monopoly on computer annoyance nowadays, but how wrong I was. All I wanted to do was quit, close the program, return to the command line.... How ******** difficult can it be to quit a program. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-Z, Escape, Alt-C, Alt-X, Alt-Z, Cmd Q, Cmd C, Cmd Z, F1, F2, F3, etc. Escape, Escape, Escape, aarrrgh.
There is a menu bar, but I cant access any of the options, occasionally the cursor moves, but I don't know why. Finally I somehow hit a random selection of keys that meant the thing quit, but I had to type 'yes' instead of just hitting 'y' to confirm that i didn't care that the text was about to be unsaved and thus heading for damnation.
WTF! Is it still 1978?
I appreciate that emacs has a long and historic pedigree, similar to vi(m). I understand that power users don't want to touch that new fangled mouse aberration that is attached to the machine. I understand that text only interfaces are the true and only way to computer nirvana.
In this day and age, there is NO reason to have SUCH a confusing and impossible to understand interface. Some might say it ain't broke, so there is no need to fix it. I would say it IS broke, very very badly.
It's not that I can't learn to use emacs, or just 'rtfm', it's just the annoyance that when I get into the program by mistake, there are no helpful or easy hints how to get out of the program, and it is inconsistent with most others editor out there.
All it needs to do is when someone hits ctrl-c is to say 'Quit without saving? y/n', I tap 'y', and the program quits. Fast, easy, efficient, and consistent.
/rant over
