Re: Interactive guide for new users (was: Re: Gather a list of confusions beginner tend to have)

[Gregory Heytings]

> > It should not just be "shorter", it should be *really* short.  I've 
> > just read it again, for a new user it is almost useless.  I think the 
> > following two keybindings would suffice: "C-x 1" and "C-g".  And 
> > perhaps the four following ones to give the new user a sense of what 
> > using C-<something> and M-<something> is: "M-f and M-b", "C-a and C-e". 
> > Note that these four keybindings are also on M-left and M-right and 
> > home and end, which is what a new user would use (and it would work).
> >
> > I would perhaps also add "M-%", which is very useful and not documented 
> > in the tutorial.
>
> But the tutorial is not just about keybindings.  It explains a lot of 
> other turf, mainly the important concepts: buffer, window, mode line, 
> etc.

A new user does not need to understand those subtleties.  He already has 
an intuitive notion of what a buffer and a window are, which suffices to 
start using Emacs.  It is enough to tell him that the mode-line contains 
the name of the major mode followed by minor modes, and that he can have a 
description of those modes and their bindings by pressing "C-h m".

BTW, there is another option that I would add in screen 3: tab-line-mode.