Re: My emacs was upgraded and I am a novice again

[Tim X]

"Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com> writes:

> On 22/09/2007, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> > Ideas for an 'index' please? What form? Its the match of 'idea/usage'
>> > vs package name/variable/mode. Generally once you have the key words,
>> > emacs is sufficiently helpful?
>>
>> Instead of inventing new machinery, how about enhancing the existing
>> one?  "C-h P" is supposed to use the index you seem to think about.
>
> Good example, both counts.
> No sign of revert (even if I understood it to mean reload).
> And I'd never heard of C-h P. As I said, I'd need to know the magic
> word 'revert'
> to find revert. That's the index I think is missing.
>

I'll start by saying I'm really not trying to be difficult here and realy
want to understand why you are finding the emacs features and functions so
difficult to feel comfortable with. The main issue I have trouble
understanding is that you seem to be coming from the position where you
find the help system lacking, yet I find the emacs help system to be the
best I've ever come across in any software package I've used in over 20
years of working with software. The fact you don't seem to be finding it
that good in itself indicates a possible problem, but I don't understand
what the basis of that is. Part of me feels that in some way your working
against the system rather than adapting to it (plus maybe a bit of the lazy
web syndrome :-).

I'll try to briefly outline how I started with emacs. Maybe the differences
in our approaches will clarify matters. 

When I first started emacs, the very first thing I did was do the built-in
tutorial. Have you ever done that?

The second thing I did was read the intro section in the emacs manual. I
then read the help section. 

I spent a bit of time playing around with the commands described in the
help section and got to understand what they all did. This was possibly the
most beneficial effort I put in. Knowing how to search the info manual,
jump to specific sections based on what the point was on within a buffer,
search for keywords etc was extremely useful. 

I then read the more genral sections from the manual covering basic
editing. Over the next few weeks, I would regularly open the manual and
look at the detailed node index. Sometimes I'd notice interesting entries,
such as "* Fixit::              Commands especially useful for fixing typos."
or "* Abbrevs::         How to define text abbreviations to reduce
the number of characters you must type." etc. When starting a new
programming or writing task, I'd first check the relevant sections of the
manual to find out what emacs had to offer in support of the particular
activity I was doing (i.e. various programming modes, etc). 

After a few months, I had pretty much completely read the emacs manual from
front to back. I often made use of the glossory and concept index
sections. While it may sound disconcerting that it took me a few months to
cover all this material, it is important to remember that I was productive
with emacs from the first day and that it is a large feature rich
package. Nobody is going to get across all it has to offer in a few hours
or even a few days. As reported by others and experienced first hand, emacs
is a package which will continue to reveal new features or ways of using
known existing features for a long time - possibly indefinitely. In fact,
it has so much, I doublt theer is anyone who is across all of it. In fact,
after over 10 years of use, there is considerable functionality that I have
forgotten about and only remember it when I see a post or an item on the
wiki that reminds me. 

I think its very size and number of features means it is unlikely anyone
will every be successful in finding a solution that makes it almost
automatic or intuitive or even straight-forward to find the precise feature
that meets their requirement. For one thing, it will be impossible to index
things in a way that is intuitive to everyone - people just vary too much
in how they think, the terms and language they use and their
backgrounds. We should certainly try to make this as easy as possible, but
I persoonally find that it does a really good job of that already and can't
see anything obvious that will improve the situation. Of course, I freely
admit I could be totally wrong, which is why I suggest an emacs wiki
page. If I am wrong, I would expect lots of people will have things to
add. If this turns out to be the situation, then there may be a case for
adding that content to the manual or as an aditional file in the
distribution. 

regards,

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au