Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Tassilo Horn]

phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord) writes:

> After that, it starts talking about Windows which, of course, are not
> windows.

Maybe with Emacs 30, we'll replace frame by window, and window by
pane. :-)

> It's very off-putting. I didn't realise this till, of course, till I
> watched on of my students fight with it.

When I started using emacs about a decade ago (as a student as well), I
didn't have problems accepting that emacs is different to what I've been
used to (KDE's Kate at that time).  I was just prepared to do whatever
it takes to get that Gnus running!

>> Yes, and the tutorial also states that you can use the arrow keys or
>> the mouse for scrolling/moving point.  Ok, not at prominent
>> positions.  But if the tutorial started with "you can use emacs like
>> notepad" then users would immediately pick up the habit of using
>> emacs like notepad.
>
> If users move the cursor in Emacs the same way at they do in notepad,
> that's fine by me.

It's not completely wrong of course but once you've got used to the
"normal" movement bindings, it's easy to go from character-based motion
to word- or sexp-based motion.

>>> There are other introductions out there, and one of the needs to be
>>> integrated into Emacs.
>>
>> Out of interest, which ones?
>
> This one has some funky pictures of the basic GUI elements.
>
> http://www.jesshamrick.com/2012/09/10/absolute-beginners-guide-to-emacs/

Indeed, that's pretty nice.  The only thing I didn't like skimming over
it is that it calls the mode-line status-bar.  Using the emacs term is
better because if you know it, you can use the help more effectively.

And the kill/yanking section is a bit weird.  It says `M-y' would
replace the current yank with the next from the kill-ring but that's
actually the previous.  And it advertises a keybinding `M-Y' which would
reverse the yank direction wrt. the kill-ring.  I suspect the author's
using some extension (maybe undo-tree?) without being aware of that.  So
there's a very high chance the novice won't be able to reproduce what
she's reading.

> This one is quite nice.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6jfrrwR10k

The problem with that (except that it's a video) is that it shows a
highly customized emacs, not the one the newbie's currently sitting in
front of.

> Basically, anything that doesn't start off with keybindings would be
> good for me.  They can come later.

"To move the cursor to the next character, simply do M-x forward-char
RET.  Yes, it's really that easy!" ;-)
Ok, ok, M-x is a keybinding, too.

But the tutorial you've cited first also starts with key bindings.

Bye,
Tassilo