Re: beginner questions

[JohnF]

Ken Goldman <kgoldman@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> On 9/25/2013 3:55 AM, JohnF wrote:
>>    Most importantly, how to "turn off everything". For example,
>> no html help, e.g., I don't want to see <u>stuff</u> or
>> <h2>stuff</h2> underlined. And really annoying, I don't want
>> the cursor to momentarily jump back to ( after I type (stuff).
>> Ditto <stuff>, etc. Very distracting (to me). Basically,
>> I just want a dumb editor
> 
> For a beginner, I suggest you give 'everything' a try
> before you turn emacs into a dumb editor.

Not a beginner programmer, just a beginner with emacs.
And to begin with, I want to get some real work done immediately --
use emacs as a tool, not as a toy. Dumbing it down will just help
me get down to work. Otherwise, not yet being familiar with emacs,
I have to look up every second or two to see what it's doing,
to make sure I'm not doing something it's already done for me, etc.

> Emacs was written by real users, and does the right thing so often that 
> you'll wonder how you ever used any other editor.
> If you're writing code (and html is code) parenthesis matching, region 
> commenting, coloring, indenting, inserting tags, headers, lists, check 
> boxes and such will save a lot of typing and debug.

You're welcome to prefer what you like. Personal preferences are
personal. That's why they call them personal. My working habits are
different than yours. I absolutely hate colors, parentheses matching,
indenting.
 Speaking of which, I hadn't really exercised that fundamental-mode
properly when I remarked in preceding post that it worked fine.
It stops "parentheses" matching <stuff>, which is what I'd noticed
since I'm currently writing some html (but mostly write C nowadays).
But it still matches (stuff) and [stuff] and {stuff}. Any way to
turn that off? Thanks.

> Once you get into emacs, you can change the colors to your liking, as 
> well as assign keys for frequently used operations.
The only colors I like are black fg on white bg -- for >>everything<<.
And I usually prefer learning and using an editor's native command set,
rather than having it learn me. But some of those M-x commands can get
pretty lengthy.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )