Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Tassilo Horn]

Vaidheeswaran C <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> writes:

> What would be the best way to learn Emacs.  Is it
>
> a) Through the different Manuals (there are many and they are big)
>
> b) Through a Book that puts all of the different pieces together in a
>    concise mannner.

The best way to learn emacs is the tutorial (C-h t).  And once you
master that, read the manuals on the topics that are most relevant to
you.

The good thing with the manuals is that they are exactly about the
version of emacs you are using.  A book might pretty soon be outdated,
although it depends on the topics it focuses.  I think from the point of
view of a normal user, emacs doesn't change (at least fundamentally) too
often.  One such fundamental change in the last years has probably been
the activation of transient-mark-mode by default.

On the other hand, a book could probably be a bit more exciting read
focussing on the things that attract new users most, e.g., org-mode,
magit, etc.  But there are actually even manuals that are a fun read,
one of them being the Gnus manual.

> How often should it catch up with new developments in Emacs releases?

Ideally it was free (not necessarily gratis!) so that it could be
updated by a community effort similar to the Git book.

> How about resources like Emacswiki, Stackexchange or Stackoverflow.

The problem with those external sites is that they frequently contain
outdated answers.  Both Emacswiki and SX allow for updating answers but
that doesn't always happen.  And IMHO, SX fosters a copy & past culture
where people just blindly copy snippets from SX answers to their
~/.emacs without even trying to understand what they are doing until all
breaks.

Also, it seems to me that many users nowadays aren't even aware that
there are official support channels (mailinglists, newsgroups, issue
trackers, IRC) for most things emacs.  They just go and ask on SX.  That
way, the maintainers won't even notice that there might be something
wrong with their package unless they follow SX, too.

I myself as one of the GNU AUCTeX maintainers sometimes check SX for
AUCTeX questions.  But honestly, I very very much prefer if bugs get
reported to debbugs (M-x TeX-submit-bug-report) and questions get asked
on our mailinglist.  Then I can answer from Gnus, and have quick access
to the docs, the code, the version control history, etc.

Just my 2 cents,
Tassilo