Re: Why does the tutorial talk about C-n/C-p etc?

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2016-03-12, at 07:51, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

>> From: address@hidden (Phillip Lord)
>> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
>> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 22:00:18 +0000
>> 
>> > Isn't that a chicken-and-egg problem?  How can you have a tutorial
>> > that depends on enough knowledge needed to install ELPA packages?
>> 
>> No, it's fine. The idea is that the basic tutorial (part of Emacs
>> tarball) runs up to the point of installing an ELPA package. That ELPA
>> package in the first instance will just be something that says "well
>> done". In the second instance, the ELPA package can do something
>> funkier, but one step at a time.
>
> So I guess the issue boils down to where are you drawing the line
> between the two parts.  Although it feels strange to have a tutorial
> divided in two, with the need to install an ELPA package in the
> middle.  But that's me.

It /is/ strange indeed.  But imagine a tutorial split in more parts,
where the first part is a general introduction, and the rest are
branches in various directions.  Sort of like the Emacs guided tour, but
with the tourist being able to actually choose the path once the basics
are covered.

Not only does this sound cool, it also showcases what /can/ be done in
Emacs.  I think that if the first part makes it clear that this is not
any kind of hack compiled in to make this sort of tutorial possible, but
a routine use of Emacs programmability, this might become an interesting
selling point.

And one of those branches should be (info "(eintr) Top"), or maybe its
first chapter converted into an interactive tutorial.  This shouldn't be
too hard to do (the text is written, after all, and written very well),
and might draw a bunch of people into Elisp.  I can even imagine similar
tutorials for other popular languages; they might show how to configure
a basic python|C|whatever environment and how to use it.  For instance,
REPL with python, compiling with C etc.

Phil, would you want me to start preliminary work on such a "eintr
tutorial branch"?

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University