> There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than immediately intuitive.
Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs?
Well, I remember using Emacs for the first time. It opened up and I started editing the opened file. I saved the file from the file menu (which also showed me the shortcut for saving the file the next time I have to save something). Done. Now, this is exactly what a novice would do with notepad.
I found that many people 'demonize' Emacs just because they found it unfamiliar. Sure it's unfamiliar. For about a day. Then, it's just as familiar as any other user interface. I now used Emacs for, well, the shell, the dired and wdired, multiple cursors, keyboard macros, project-wide grepping and everything in between. Getting familiar with the editor was a great thing to have done, however unfamiliar it was in the beginning.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can truly say that learning how to properly use a text editor, especially one so powerful as Emacs, is the one thing the any programmer absolutely must do. So, even if the editor isn't "anything other than immediately intuitive", it's still a good idea to wrap your head around the non-intuitive things.
Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs?
Well, I remember using Emacs for the first time. It opened up and I started editing the opened file. I saved the file from the file menu (which also showed me the shortcut for saving the file the next time I have to save something). Done. Now, this is exactly what a novice would do with notepad.
I found that many people 'demonize' Emacs just because they found it unfamiliar. Sure it's unfamiliar. For about a day. Then, it's just as familiar as any other user interface. I now used Emacs for, well, the shell, the dired and wdired, multiple cursors, keyboard macros, project-wide grepping and everything in between. Getting familiar with the editor was a great thing to have done, however unfamiliar it was in the beginning.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can truly say that learning how to properly use a text editor, especially one so powerful as Emacs, is the one thing the any programmer absolutely must do. So, even if the editor isn't "anything other than immediately intuitive", it's still a good idea to wrap your head around the non-intuitive things.