Comment by rk06
9 hours ago
rest of the world is ctrl-c, ctrl-x and ctrl-v. but emacs is in completely different world.
for emacs to gain mindshare, it needs to meet people where they are, not where emacs was 30 yrs ago.
of course, emacs does not work reliably in windows, so that is another issue
Learning that those shortcuts are arbitrary, application-defined conventions is the first step toward enlightenment.
M-x cua-mode enables a variety of “traditional” keybinds such as C-x / C-c / C-v for cut / copy / paste
> of course, emacs does not work reliably in windows, so that is another issue
No, it's the same issue. In a Linux shell (say, bash or fish) ctrl-c is not "copy" but "terminate program". Most emacs editing keys (copy-paste, motion) work in the shell as they do in emacs, at least in fish and bash (and probably other places in Linux).
Ctrl-C in Emacs is not "terminate program", it is "start of user command", in most modes. Similarly, even in vi/vim, Ctrl-C does something completely different. So this has nothing to do with the terminal whatsoever.
It's an even more basic Unix affordance, that terminals had a key-binding that generated the interrupt signal, and programs could define useful behaviors that commenced upon receipt of interrupt.
It made sense that interrupt in Emacs could get into a controlled state of receiving the next command. It's a little bit like the SAK (secure attention key) concept, as seen with Windows use of ctrl-alt-del.
Edit: Ironically, as a long-term emacs user, I don't really remember any commands that start with ctrl-c! For me, the most common sequences start with ctrl-X or meta-X. Or the prefix search commands ctrl-S and ctrl-R.
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