Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?"

[drain]

> Specifically, if someone is interested in introducing Emacs to a
> non-Emacs user, what strategies should they adopt to maximize their
> chances of having a new convert.  I welcome any insights from both the
> victors and the vanquished on the "Convert to or introduce Emacs
> battle".

The key is to tailor Emacs to the needs of the non-user. I was able to get
a (female) art historian completely addicted to Emacs because I took her
dissertation and broke it down into org-mode headlines. I sent her a video
of this process -- how effortless it was -- and also explained how her
thesis would have been much more coherently structured with regular
headlines and subheadlines.

Secondly, I showed her how effortlessly I could format paragraphs.

Thirdly, we originally started out as language exchange partners (she was
correcting my German; I was correcting her English), and she was impressed
with how obsessively organized and stable my system was. Then I showed her
split screen and macros. The following template would automatically be
inserted every single time:

******* (1) "via" und "in the long run"

ORIGINAL

But on the long run I would like to speak per voice chat.

KORREKTUR

But in the long run I would like to speak via voice chat.

ERKLÄRUNGEN

(a) Im Englischen sagt man "in the long run" anstatt von "on the long run."
"In
the long run" ist ein spezieller Ausdruch auf Englisch.

(b) Wir benutzen die Präposition "via" in diesem Zusammenhang anstatt von
"per."

All I do is copy the incorrect text, enter a numeric argument for the Nth
correction, type M-x gt RET and it produces:

******** (1)

ORIGINAL

But on the long run I would like to speak per voice chat.

KORREKTUR



ERKLÄRUNG

. . .

Anyway, the point is, you can't just send someone a video of you editing a
couple different .cpp buffers in multiple windows, or entering commands
into the shell. You have to really convince someone -- in forms he / she
understands -- that Emacs is an optimization machine for ALL forms of text
editing.

But I've been successful with several non-programmers.



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