I like how the author of the Anvil Editor (an Acme-like editor) explains how to use it and provides a small number of super-short videos to show it. Here’s a good way to use video in documentation! This is important because an "ACME-like editor" is pretty alien for people these days. It relies on three buttons your mouse. The menus are small, editable windows where you select a word with the mouse and the middle mouse button to execute it. You can create your own menus by simply writing them.
This is great, but alien.
I kept wondering how feasible it would be to add a few key bindings to allow one to use it without a mouse. Window switching, selection growing, executing, I keep thinking that it should be possible. That mandatory three button mouse has kept me away from ACME-like editors.
I've been experimenting a bit with adding more keyboard bindings. Since it doesn't seem to have a git repository, I made my own so I can keep track of the patches.
I plan to force-push with abandon.
I try to do a tiny snippet of programming in the mornings or evenings. Currently I'm looking at my "extending the selection" code and how it interacts (badly) with multiple cursors. I guess I don't understand the attraction of multiple cursors compared to "record a keyboard macro once and then replay it for the rest of the file, for a fixed number of times, or as long as I keep pressing a key" (the way standard Emacs allows me to) compared to alt-clicking a number of times at just the right spot (I guess my mousing is terrible) to place the cursors and then do the necessary edits. Whenever something like this comes, I'm editing data files or something like that so I would have to place hundreds or thousands of cursors… Only one of these approaches scales. I must be missing something about multiple cursors.
When I asked about it on fedi, people recommended I give `multiple-cursors` for Emacs a try. I looked at the Emacs Rocks video for mc and liked it. Again, this is video documentation well done, essentially a *demo*, not a manual.
I started using for small things (a handful of lines) where it was indeed easier to use than keyboard macros or regular expressions because of the immediate feedback and the ability to undo any damage done and still continue the operation. Nice!
I still ♥️ Emacs!
#Emacs