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

[Dave Pawson]

On 23/09/2007, Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> wrote:

> 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 :-).

Quite possibly right on both counts Tim.
I'll emphasise your phrasing. 'Rather than adapting to it'.
I'd rather adapt technology to what I want in preference to learning
how a system
works and adapting my way of working to the tool.


>
> 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?

No. Why? Because the baseline info system I found klunky and horrible.
I'll guess its because I came from a hyperlinked world view.


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

<guilty>If all else fails, RTFM</guilty>
But I guess you know that by now.


>
> 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.

Noting that I was trying to learn SGML, DSSSL, Scheme at the time,
emacs was the only editor I found that could tackle them. Hence I viewed
emacs as a tool on the way to doing a job, not an end in its own right?
I *think* this was before I bought my first Learning emacs book too.



<snip/>

>
> 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.

Aside. I'm currently converting basic.texi, and noted that it has a
number of indices,
something that docbook processing currently doesn't support. +1 to texinfo...
until it's added to the docbook processing.

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 doubt many will argue with that Tim. Marvelous bit of kit.
I'm beginning to appreciate that the documentation for emacs actually
matches its capability. What I don't agree is that it is presented in
an approachable manner.


>
> 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 personally 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.

Whats the saying? Different strokes for different folks.
I'm fully sympathetic to the view that we'll never get an index to suite
everyone.
  I do think presentation and cross-referencing
can be improved though. That's my starting point.

regards



-- 
Dave Pawson
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http://www.dpawson.co.uk