Re: What would an "An Official" GNU Emacs Book look like?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Vaidheeswaran C writes:

 > Thanks for the kind words.
 > 
 > I am trying to get senior Emacs developers involved (early in the
 > cycle) to ensure that the Emacs Primer I am proposing is of
 > comparable quality to Emacs Manual.

You're going about it the wrong way.  They're busy people.  At best at
this stage you'll get kind words from them.  They need to see an
outline of the contents and some writing samples.  But remember the
itch-scratching principle: If it's important enough to you to do it,
it will get done.  The way you do it will give some people hives[1],
and they'll scratch their itches.  And so it goes.

 > I am new to the list.  So it is understandable that there is some
 > reluctance (even in principle) to lend me some help.

The Emacs developers are far more meritocratic than that.  A couple
are academics and have perhaps written introductory textbooks.  That
plus "is anybody interested?" might garner a bit more attention than
"hey, neat idea!", but not all that much.

But any senior developer who came up with the same idea who *hasn't*
written an introductory textbook in some field would get the same
treatment you're getting.  They'd be asked for a project plan and
writing samples (just like O'beep-beep or Abee-ee-eep would ask for if
you tried to get it published commercially).

 > Let me see how far I can move my proposal forward.

s/project/proposal/, and you've probably got a deal.  (I suck at
writing introductory material, but I'll be happy to cheer for you!)

Footnotes: 
[1]  An itchy disease, sometimes quite serious (drugs,
hospitalization, etc).