Toward a "modern" Emacs

>Omitting the Emacs/Unix-specific step of invoking LaTeX, Excel or just about any spreadsheet can do it just fine. Again, the old joke is "Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor".

I really doubt a complete novice (not my words) could do it with Excel either. But the general expectation seems to be that if you are unable to do something in Excel, then "stop complaining and start learning". My objection was directed at commenter pgdx who complained that if a "complete novice" can't do this convoluted task without reading 600 pages of manual then "then that is where you have lost 90% of users." Isn't it a bit unfair to expect Emacs to enable someone who has always lived under a rock to be able to handle CSV files using it, without first learning the basics?

Another joke is that Emacs stands for "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping". Oh, the horror.

>Why should I open a CSV file in a text editor and expect it to be treated like a spreadsheet?

You don't have to, if you don't want to. I guess the example was just to demonstrate how powerful and extendible Emacs is. If you don't care about org-mode or csv-mode, then please ignore them. They don't bloat Emacs, other than taking up a bit of disk space.

>Because the original ones were horrible? Maybe if any two keyboards kept Del and Ins in the same spot, I could learn to touch-type with them, but that would still require moving my right hand from the normal position.

My comment on the CUA key bindings was written with tongue in cheek. My point was that key bindings have not been set in stone since the beginning of the IT era, and also that talking about Ctrl-x/c/v as "Common User Access Keys" is a misnomer.