Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

On Fri, May 08 2015,Phillip Lord wrote:


[snipped 11 lines]

>> The best way to learn emacs is the tutorial (C-h t).
>
> I wish this were true. Actually, the tutorial is not a good
> introduction to emacs. It's over 200 lines before you get off "how to
> move the cursor around". Most people these days assume that you do this
> with the mouse or a finger and that doesn't take 200 lines to explain.
> Works with Emacs too.
>
> There are other introductions out there, and one of the needs to be
> integrated into Emacs.
>

As a counterexample I did find the tutorial helpful and just about
enough to get started back in the 90s.  Then again, I simply accepted
that's how you learn Emacs and went ahead.  and it was a good thing
that I did because it simply forced me to abandon vi mode of thinking.

Though I distinctly remember my opinion was initially "dafuq is this
ctrl and meta key mumbo jumbo" and I was off to a grumpy start in
learning it.

 sivaram
 --