Making Emacs popular again

> I think it must be like an in-joke.

> It starts out fairly mnemonic:
> C-x 0 - close current window
> C-x 1 - make this the only window
> C-x 2 - split the window (top and bottom of course - terminal only have 80 columns, and 40 is really too narrow to be useful)

Keep in mind that I started using it in the 90s.

> but then new features were added incrementally:

> C-x 3 - split side-by-side, because megapixel displays makes this useful
> C-x 4 - do something in the "other" window - because now that we have more than 2 windows, there are more things we want to do.

I rarely (if ever) use more than a horizontal split, as this is most useful to me, and I usually just switch between them ('o' is easy to remember for that.)

> C-x 5 - do something in another frame (X11 window) because a real window system makes that meaningful.

Ok, I always run it -nw (started doing so because I did not always have X available anyway, and stuck with it because I really prefer the look.)

> C-x 6 - does something with text columns in a buffer ... OK, you have to squint a bit to see the connection now
> C-x 7 ... nothing
> C-x 8 - insert unicode chars ... squinting isn't sufficient any more

These are indeed odd, but I've never used them :)

Regarding the vi(m) interface: Maybe I might find it easier now, but I was probably mostly confused by the interface back then.

(And I really like M-x <whatever> telling you if there's a shortcut available.)