Re: Failing to see the allure of Emacs

[address@hidden]

I understand all the objections made to my saying that the emacs 
documentation is incomplete, not up to date, and not readily usable, and I 
don't feel like arguing the matter merely in technical detail.  Some 
disagree.  That's cool.  I wish them well.

I have a relative who, before email, never wrote me.  Once she had email, 
she became a very lively correspondent.  Paper wasn't her medium, but email 
was.

Got the idea?

I can read source code and I do; but there's a lot of source code, and most 
of it is unrewarding reading.  I can use info, but I don't like it.  Please 
don't tell me "use info", because info is designed and intended not for 
reading, but for brief, casual online reference, and that is its cognitive 
organization.  It's poor as a learning tool, at least for text-based and 
example-based learners like me.  I'm a fast reader and I like hectares of 
well-indexed text with lots of bookmarks: that's my best medium.

If documentation is worth doing -- and I think it is -- then it's worth 
doing well, in a way that meets the needs of the people who'll actually use 
it.  In that light, emacs documentation seems to me to hold up not too well.

Look through this newsgroup for all the places a response has said "Have 
you tried function such-and-such", or "that behavior is controlled by 
variable X except that the default is variable Y".  If the documentation 
were better, much of that would disappear.

When a literate, conscientious user with decades of programming experience, 
decades of experience writing documentation, decades of using emacs, and 
decades of support for free software says something like what I say, trying 
to argue him down is unproductive.  Of course I appreciate all the concrete 
help I've gotten here and in other such forums, but it sure would be good 
to have complete, up to date, readily usable documentation.  (Smiling.)

djc