'Emacs style' delete line shortcut (CTRL/U) doesn't work correctly in Firefox

[Peter Flynn]

On 12/10/18 10:49, Liam Proven wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 at 11:37, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
[...]
> The battle is over. The Emacs and Vi UIs may be better in some
> measurable way -- I don't think they are, but I'm giving the benefit
> of the doubt -- but they are out of step with basically *all other
> user-interactive software in the world*.

Their authors' argument would be that they were there first, so it's CUA
that's out of step :-)

> Both could be modernised.

As you say, fixing Emacs is pretty straightforward.

> But making Vi fully CUA-compliant means it's not Vi any more, because
> the Vi UI model is profoundly different.

The dual-mode model of editing went out with TECO (read: "the ark"). The
idea is that you have to press a key before you can type anything, and
press another key before you can start editing what you've typed. This
made sense when using TECO to edit a magnetic tape, but it makes no
sense whatsoever in the modern world for normal text-editing purposes:
despite being actually a very small piece of excise, it's alien to the
generality of UIs, even Emacs.

> Emacs, not so much. They could do it. But there's a lot of hostility
> and resistance, and I don't really understand why.

There is a lot of personal pride and history invested in Emacs, largely
orbiting around the cult of its principal author, and the culture in
which it grew up. It certainly was groundbreaking, and it remains one of
the very few editors that can edit *anything* (for most practical
purposes), meaning it's at the bottom of the toolbag of most systems
engineers for use when everything else has failed. Once the cultus
disappears, it will change.

But to use it for editing plain, unmarked text is like using a Saturn V
launcher to rescue your drone stuck in a tree. On heavily marked text,
however, such as TEI, it's the only free system available with proper
controls; and its biggest use is for program code, which has a wholly
different set of requirements.

///Peter