"My mind is going... I can feel it."

[elfs]

There is an old line from The Zen of Programming in which an elder master chastises a young apprentice about how people have tasks they wish to achieve-- and one of those tasks is never to have to learn a whole new editor.

For the past week, I have been in wireframe Hell, making up a document that ultimately I have labeled (in the comments) the BPOL for Marketing. BPOL stands for "Big Pack O' Lies," for that's what this is: the end result will have the same vague relationships to reality that a Magritte painting has to standing downwind of your lover while he smokes a really good pipe.

But to make the wireframes I have had to use Windows tools, because that's what the job demands. Now, generally, I don't loathe Windows too much when it does what I want. And Visio is doing what I want.

On the other hand, it is another editor. And this morning, having finally gone back to my favorite operating system, I discovered to my horror that I couldn't remember an entire host of common commands for Emacs: things like cut, copy, and paste! The habit for ^X, ^C, and ^V had colonized my brain and the Emacs equivalents (^W, Alt-W, and ^Y) were not immediately at hand. I had to consult a manual to remind myself of them.

Comments

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I have to chuckle over this.

As an office admin temp I've change platforms constantly. Even among Windows programs things aren't consistent (though each version gets a little bit better). I've encountered different versions of the same program or even different programs, all of which mean I need to remember a different set of quick keys.

So, sorry, not much condoling here, but I do understand your pain. ;)

[marketeer]

Not all marketeers are liars. Some of us have to try really hard to keep the tech guys from selling vaporware.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I feel a little dirty for knowing this, but Aqua-ized Emacs on Macs uses Apple-X, Apple-C, Apple-V just like everything else.