Re: Specialized Emacs Features ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jun 3, 2017, at 0:55, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <address@hidden>
>> Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2017 00:11:53 +0900
>> 
>> Now, forward to the structure of the current manual... Let's say we keep the 
>> separation between "normal" and "specialized" as far as the printed copies 
>> are concerned, we can still rearrange the way the manual is structured right 
>> now to put related features together and get rid of that silly "advanced 
>> features" section:
>> 
>> • 1 The Organization of the Screen
>> • 2 Kinds of User Input
>> • 3 Keys
>> • 4 Keys and Commands
>> • 5 Entering Emacs
>> • 6 Exiting Emacs
>> • 52 Quitting and Aborting
>> • 46 Saving Emacs Sessions
>> • 10 Help
>> 
>> • 8 The Minibuffer
>> • 9 Running Commands by Name
>> • 40 Running Shell Commands from Emacs
>> 
>> • 18 File Handling
>> • 7 Basic Editing Commands
>> • 22 International Character Set Support
>> • 16 Commands for Fixing Typos
>> • 15 Searching and Replacement
>> • 43 Sorting Text
>> • 24 Indentation
>> • 11 The Mark and the Region
>> • 12 Killing and Moving Text
>> • 13 Registers
>> • 17 Keyboard Macros
>> • 47 Recursive Editing Levels
>> • 30 Dired, the Directory Editor
>> • 42 Printing Hard Copies
>> 
>> • 14 Controlling the Display
>> • 19 Using Multiple Buffers
>> • 20 Multiple Windows
>> • 21 Frames and Graphical Displays
>> 
>> • 23 Major and Minor Modes
>> • 25 Commands for Human Languages
>> • 31 The Calendar and the Diary
>> • 26 Editing Programs
>> • 27 Compiling and Testing Programs
>> • 28 Maintaining Large Programs
>> • 29 Abbrevs
>> • 44 Editing Pictures
>> • 45 Editing Binary Files
>> • 37 Document Viewing
>> • 48 Hyperlinking and Navigation Features
>> • 49 Other Amusements
>> 
>> • 35 Host Security
>> • 36 Network Security
>> • 32 Sending Mail
>> • 33 Reading Mail with Rmail
>> • 34 Gnus
>> • 38 Web Browsing with EWW
>> • 39 Embedded WebKit Widgets
>> • 41 Using Emacs as a Server
>> 
>> • 50 Emacs Lisp Packages
>> • 51 Customization
>> 
>> • 53 Dealing with Emacs Trouble
>> • 54 Reporting Bugs
>> • 55 Contributing to Emacs Development
>> • 56 How To Get Help with GNU Emacs
> 
> Could you explain what principles led to this order?

1st section is about starting/quitting and getting help.
2nd is about running commands.
3rd is about text editing
4th is about the display
5th is about the main advertised modes
6th is about networking
7th is about extending Emacs
8th is about the project in general (although 53 could be in the 1st section)

>  It looks strange to me to have, for example, "Saving Emacs Sessions" before 
> "Basic
> Editing Commands"

Maybe, but Saving emacs sessions is more related to quitting than to anything 
else.

> , or "Sorting Text" before "Killing and Moving text".

Indeed, but Mark&Region/Killing/Registers are all related and Sorting is closer 
to general text editing.

But there is definitely room for improvement.

Jean-Christophe