Re: Jaxa/XY?? (Was Java to Go?)

[nsivin@xxxxxxxx (Nathan Sivin)]

Harmon:

I have been trying to get a straight answer to a couple of simple
questions from a real emacs expert for a long time. First, my
two email accounts are on University computers, and I can't change the
Unix or emacs versions they use.

I log on via a 14.4K modem using Crosstalk. On both versions of
gnu emacs that I use, despite their substantial differences in
other respects, the meta-key using this modem and software is the
escape key on my PC keyboard. To reformat text, I have first to
press the escape key, and then the q key. The many meta-key
commands that work that way are a pain.

I keep asking all the people who tell me how customizable emacs
is how I can customize it to let me press plain old ordinary alt-q to
reformat. I can do that with various other programs in my
account when accessing it via the modem. I next ask them how I
can customize emacs to automatically reformat lines of text as I
change them. I think that became standard in editors ca. 1988.
Oddly enough, they always change the subject. They never just
admit that it is a ludicrously primitive editor, which despite
the substantial customizability it seems to me. Of course it may
be that it will do practically anything but is just miserably
documented (including the standard gnu emacs handbook, which made
it look like nothing more than a very customizable ludicrously
primitive editor).

I assume, since you were more emphatic than anyone else about the
infinite customizability of emacs, that, unlike the other people
I asked, you will not change the subject.

-- Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-3325
(nsivin@xxxxxxxx)