Re: Let's make Emacs mainstream (through org-mode)

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 11:22 PM
> From: "Karl Fogel" <kfogel@red-bean.com>
> To: "James Lu" <jamtlu@gmail.com>
> Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Let's make Emacs mainstream (through org-mode)
>
> On 15 Dec 2020, James Lu wrote:
> >I spent months of my life researching todo app.
> >
> >Every single todo list app would approximate some person's ideal todo
> >list app, but every person complained it was missing one feature they
> >needed.
> >Emacs org-mode solves this problem.
> >
> >Either an app had too few buttons or too many buttons.
> >Emacs org-mode solves this problem.
> >
> >Let's stop messing with code.
> >
> >Let's start hacking.
> >
> >Clever hacking is doing the impossible.
> >Let's start writing GFDL guides and selling them.
> >Let's start selling support plans.
> >Let's start making Emacs org-mode a hot trend.
> >Let's make the website RMS suggested where you can ask questions on
> >org-mode, and see public answers.
> >
> >Who's with me?
> 
> Org Mode is very powerful, and some of the ideas you list above could be 
> successful.  I encourage you to try them!  But I think asking "Who's with 
> me?" is not a route to making them happen.  As Eli Zaretskii replied to an 
> earlier post of yours back in September [1]:
> 
>   > Nothing in Emacs gets done because someone asks a "why not do this
>   > and that?" question.  We don't have a means to tell some employee to
>   > do this and that job.  For a job to get done, someone motivated
>   > enough should sit down and do it.  The best candidate for that is
>   > whoever raises the issue in the first place, but of course not
>   > everyone who proposes something can actually implement it.

There have been times where discussions led to significant improvements, but 
mostly 
concerned peripheral discussions where many could benefit - e.g., texinfo output
mathematical expressions using Mathjax.  For user specific things, one can get 
help
implementing an idea.  The person raising the problem is almost always more 
productive
when that same person works on it.  Otherwise it would be a gamble that can 
easily
lead to disappointments.     
 
> Best regards,
> -Karl
> 
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-09/msg02110.html
> 
>