Re: How to make Emacs popular again.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 19:30:08 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@rcdrun.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > - -- undecided-unix (alias: unix)
> 
> Why is it undecided?! It is unclear. Why is alias "unix"?! It is
> unclear, why not call it unix?! Why is it alias? What is alias?
> Consider my questions with !?  hypothetical questions that user could
> be asking.
> 
> > No conversion on encoding, automatic conversion on decoding.
> 
> This sentence says nothing. It is clear to developer what it means,
> but is unclear to average user.
> 
> Conversion of what?! It is not specified.
> 
> Encoding of what?! It is no specified.
> 
> What would mean "automatic conversion"?!
> 
> Decoding of what?!

You cannot learn this stuff by walking around the UI and reading the
tooltips.  It's unrealistic.  Those tooltips assume some minimal
knowledge of the terminology and the UI elements, which are described
in the tutorial and in the first chapter of the manual.  Making each
term a hyperlink that leads to its description, then each term in that
description a hyperlink, and so on and so forth, will in effect take
the user down a huge rabbit hole.  Users who need to actually do
something useful with their time, not just follow hyperlinks, will
very quickly lose patience and stop following.

> - Making Emacs friendlier will be easier with a built-in dictionary
>   that will describe any terminology in easy English

We already have that: the Glossary section of the manual.  But I don't
think taking the user there for each non-trivial word in our
documentation is a practical idea, or even a good one.

> - I press {C-h k} and then choose Tools -> Search Files (Grep)...
> 
> Side comment: if it runs "grep" command, I don't know why it is
> capitalized, but alright.
> 
> I wanted to find out about "Search Files..." so the menu option is
> pretty clear, it helps me search files, but then description about
> "Search files" does not even mention the word "search".

Unsurprisingly, the doc string assumes the user already knows what
Grep is.  So it doesn't say "search", because that's what Grep stands
for.

Doc strings are in generally terse; if you want more details,
including background etc, you need to read the description of the
commands in the user manual.  There's a 95-line section there about
M-x grep and related commands.

> Emacs should have a built in support question system, so that every
> user can straight send a support question, and which would be answered
> by using referenced or hyperlinked easy English, and such question
> would be then automatically placed on some website, or integrated
> into Emacs, so next users could then inquire answers in easier and
> easier manner.

I'm sure patches to provide such a system will be greatly appreciated,
when and if submitted.