Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-05-08, at 12:06, Vaidheeswaran C <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> 
wrote:

> What do you think are the "must haves" in an Emacs book?  How often
> should it catch up with new developments in Emacs releases?

I'm really astonished that nobody mentioned Mickey Petersen's "Mastering
Emacs": https://www.masteringemacs.org/ .  It's an excellent blog, and
the author announced also a book (which is not just a bunch of blog
posts put together, but mostly newly written material).  I'm not sure
how much I'm allowed to say about the book itself, but let me put it
this way: *if* I were to learn Emacs soon, I'd check the website for the
book *every day* to see when it's out.  (For intermediate to advanced
users it's not a must-read, but nice anyway.)

I agree that the built-in tutorial needs rewriting, but it's not that
bad.  The official manual, OTOH, is very good.  Also, I second Drew's
suggestion about learning to ask Emacs.

Also, subscribing to Planet Emacsen RSS, while not a must-do, may be
a good idea.

And after a while, reading Robert J. Chassell's "An Introduction to
Programming in Emacs Lisp" becomes a necessity. ;-)

As for the updates: Emacs changes *a lot* from one release to the next
one, but most of these changes are not visible for users.  Plus, you can
always read the CHANGES file.

Best,

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