Re: Rapidly navigating buffers using search

[Jeongtae Roh]

I think Emacs Manual is good, but I need a 'modernized function'.

I want to search a function what I need, just like google it.

ex) C-h "how can i find a word" -> answer: type C-s

It will satisfy almost every newbie. But it looks so hard to make.

-Jeongtae.



On Jul 11, 8:25 am, "B. T. Raven" <ni...@nihilo.net> wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
> > 2010-07-10
>
> > On Jul 8, 3:36 am, David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> I think the point was that the manual was not deficient concerning the
> >> information it provides, but in not making Xah Lee want to read it.
>
> >> In a way, it is a losing battle.  People expect software to just work
> >> without reading manuals.  95% of all Word users, for example, create
> >> their documents by mostly visual manipulation of their text without
> >> having a clue about underlying structures like references, style sheets
> >> and so on.
>
> > that's called progress.
>
> Maybe at the end of that "Road Ahead" there is the final Borgesian data
> base that contains all possible compositions. Then if you want to write
> a piece of expository prose arguing for the healthfulness of Twinkies,
> you can just pick the document from a menu. Voila! Magnum opus
> determined, dared, and done.
>
>
>
>
>
> > vast majority of people who makes a living by coding, don't know any
> > assembly language. They use scripting langs such as php, python, perl,
> > and probably a significant of them don't even know a language proper,
> > e.g. they are html, css, dreamweaver etc “coders”.
>
> > often there's complaint heard in the form of a sigh that sneer upon
> > the earlier generation, thinking they are uneducated and idiotic, but
> > quite the contrary. (slide rule vs electronic calculator, check vs
> > credit card use, hand writing vs type writer, type writer vs word
> > processor, ...)
>
> >> The result is unmaintainable crap, but they would not know
> >> better.  Word tries keeping up in this battle of computer illiteracy by
> >> doing things like enumerations, styles and so on "automagically",
> >> second-guessing the user, and the user tries second-guessing Word in
> >> order to get around that.
>
> > yes, there's something to be said about how much time people spend in
> > learning the tools well for their profession.
>
> > however, this must be differentiated from requiring users to
> > understand the implementation or the science behind things. Many tech
> > geekers unconsciously confuse this.
>
> > Also, if you take a look from the other side of the coin, although
> > say, the prototypical “Microsoft using idiots” create incredibly
> > crappy documents, but overall, the technology make it possible for a
> > thousand fold more people contribute to this world in diverse fields.
> > In fact, many of these “idiots”, are professors and scientists and
> > engineers, who have not studied about computing. (in a similar way, a
> > typical hardcore tech geeker, who can drilldown on tech detail of C, C+
> > +, Java, python, perl, lisp, tail recursion, monads, macros, pointers,
> > arrays, garbage collection, RFCs, etc and etc, but are a complete
> > idiot to fields of psychology, legal system, history, basics
> > economics... etc.)
>
> Some are, some aren't. From what I can informally grok, RMS for example,
> displays a significantly higher level of general culture than the
> average sociology or psychology Ph. D.
>
>
>
> > personally, i'm a friend with many older generation mathematician
> > professors, who are run conferences or are chairman or presidents of
> > universities or large well known academic organizations. These
> > people's IQ, are above than i'd say 99% of hardcore emacs developers
> > in entire emacs history. These people, won't even be able to grok what
> > emacs is actually used for. It'd be hard pressed for them to
> > understand what a embeded scripting language in a application really
> > means. In fact, most won't even try. Here we can actually see a
> > phenomenon that might be interesting to tech geekers. In many
> > professional mathematicians's minds, programers are considered
> > inferior brainers, that programing field is something considered
> > trivial, a mere matter of some typing and dicing and fidgeting with
> > their theories.
>
> If Gauss or Goedel dared to sneer at someone like Donald Knuth they
> would be shown up as fools.
>
>
>
> >> It is an escalation of mutual cluelessness.  The more userfriendly a
> >> piece of software becomes, the more this becomes a problem for
> >> _competent_ people willing to learn about their tool.
>
> > This train of thought, is prototypical of tech geek thinking. It comes
> > in a chantable form too that we often see these idiots put in their
> > sigs.
>
> The poster's point is that there is no hardwired repertoire of
> thinkables and that any design template that posits such state of
> affairs is doomed to become a strait-jacket. M$ is trying to please the
> lowest common denominator, same as the pornographers.
>
>
>
>
>
> > It bears nothing to reality. It amounts to something equivalent to,
> > say, something as factual and meaningless as “the world has become
> > more dumb.”.
>
> > It's incredible how this mentality tickles the tech geekers, as we can
> > see already a bunch following heartily praising this summery. The
> > thought that easy-to-use or GUI based software creates a viscous cycle
> > of more idiots, is a pleasing thought to tech geekers.
>
> > Psychologists have studied this. In one example, different people
> > perceive different aspects of identical things. (e.g. flashing a
> > photo, and guys remember it as a photo of a beautiful chick, while
> > others don't remember there's a woman in it.) And or people will have
> > opposing conclusions given a identical article. (e.g. the leftist will
> > perceive a concrete evidence for leftist thoughts, while rightists see
> > concrete evidence of rightist thoughts (while the open source and or
> > “‘Free’ Software” camp see confirmation of the need for software
> > “freedom!”.)) People will defend to death their (irrational) beliefs.
> > The severe case is a form of self-deception, from beliefs in God to
> > politics to love relationships.
>
> > It has to do with protecting one's own mental image and with that
> > generating the juices for to go on. This may seem all illogical... but
> > you know how there's many personality disorders and psychological
> > illness and the phenomenon of mental breakdown? A gist of it is that
> > human animals are just not logical machines, the working of the mind,
> > the constituents to go on living, is filled with seemingly illogical
> > complications.
>
> > (personally, i have struggled with a quest to become a machine-like
> > being, e.g. like those of mister Data or Spock in the StarTrek scifi.
> > Been fret with this for some 20 years. Part of it is inborn
> > personality, a inclination towards what's called a schizoid
> > personality, and part of it is a quest to have the most powerful,
> > logical, mind without emotion. It'd be a booklet to write about my
> > experiences in this. (most tech geekers will probably think if it can
> > done then wow that'd be great... (it's not what you think!)) (and
> > besides a personal tale, there's also many scientific aspect of this.
> > On the computer science side: can machines think? why yes or no? when
> > circuits becomes sufficiently complex, will it develop emotion?
> > Emergent phenomenon, complexity theories, cellular automata... and on
> > the psychology/neuro-science side: is it possible for a human animal
> > be totally emotionless? (note that many Hollywood movies depict such
> > (fascinating!) character to various degrees.)) )
>
> This sounds like a bad attack of ADD. What's fascinating about Keanu
> Reeves? Lieutenant Ripley is fascinating; Bishop is not.
>
>
>
>
>
> >> At least Emacs is
> >> at its heart and in most of its modes a WYSIWYG system with regard to
> >> the actual file contents: regardless of the crap people do, what ends up
> >> on disk is that what they see on their screen.
>
> >> I have no idea what to do to make people lean towards looking at the
> >> documentation.  Emacs has a help menu, and those also point to tutorials
> >> explaining the basics in most local languages.
>
> >> But people look at documentation mostly when they run into problems they
> >> can't deal with on their own.  And the more userfriendly Emacs becomes,
> >> and the better its menus and interactive helps become, the less people
> >> become inclined to bother looking for help.
>
> > been writing already long... so i'll cut short here. All of the above
> > is actually not exactly revalent here. We can go on philosophizing
> > about whether people are getting more dumb or whatnot...
>
> Boris Sidis, (Bill's father), a shrewd psychologist, thought, with good
> reason, that IQ testing was dumb. I do, however, have solid evidence
> that the X generation is more ahistorical than the Boomers, who, in
> turn, tend to live in the moment.
>
>
>
> > but the issue here is the quality of emacs's documentation. A
> > documentation, has a quality. This quality can be measured. It can be
> > measure in many ways, depending on your purpose. e.g. how good is the
> > use of the english language in coveying information? how easy is it
> > for readers to understand? how impeccable is the style with respect to
> > logicians? How well is the grammar? How well are the over-all
> > structure organized? will people LIKE the manual? ... so many and so
> > many.
>
> How good (adjective) is the grammar? The nub of the matter here is the
> question of who will evaluate the measurer.
>
>
>
> > but in short, here's one thing to consider: i think emacs manual is
> > well written (generally speaking), but it is largely written in the
> > 1980s. The bulk of it, the organization, the style of what things are
> > presented, the verbosity of the words to convey a idea, ... are all
> > geared in the computer of a era 2 decades old.
>
> There are things more than two millennia old whose value just keeps
> growing year by year. Since the philosophy and structure of the Emacs
> documentation was so well thought out way back then, the texts just have
> to be tweaked here and there to keep up with the evolution of the program.
>
>
>
> > i wrote something about this aspect, it can be seen here:
>
> > • Problems of Emacs's Manual
> >  http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_manual_problem.html
>
> > i'll need to clean it up...
>
> Or maybe even entirely rethink your position. "Cleaning" it up, as you
> say, might just further implicate you in the "viscous" ...
>
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