Thanks to all those who attended the FOSS session on “Emacs a day keeps the vi-zing away” on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at Department of Astronomy, Osmania University.

The key bindings used in the session are available at emacs-a-day-keeps-the-vi-zing-away.txt

Eighteen people attended the session. We explained few key bindings, and then the participants tried it out on their systems. If they got stuck, then we helped them out. We waited for everyone to get the commands working on their system, before moving to the next set of key bindings. No-one is left behind :)

Those who didn’t know keyboard typing, had to search for the keys, most of the time. When they finally did, they were not looking at the monitor to see the output, because they were keen on typing the keys correctly! It will take them some time and practice to get used to it.

Most of them were able to understand the commands and try it out by themselves though. It was good to see some hands-on experience in the labs.

Nikhil suggested on doing a vim session, and I welcome the same. I’d encourage anyone to come forward to take sessions, or make requests to the group.

Thanks to Prof. Hasan for arranging the labs for the session. He suggested inviting the adjacent Mathematics Department students in future sessions. They are in the process of setting up another lab too.