Re: An anonymous IRC user's opinion

[Eduardo Ochs]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2024 at 00:30, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>   > The idea of adding a button for beginners at the startup page and
>   > making it go to an Org page
>
> Could you explain the connection between "a button for beginners"
> and "go to an Org page"?  Is this an assumption that beginners
> all want the same thing?
>
> Aside from being in Org mode, what would that page contain?


Hi Richard,

I don't know Org well, and when I wrote that I had the impression that
we could create an Org page with:

  1. checkboxes that looked like these,

       [ ] rainbow delimiters: (explanation)
       [ ] blink cursor: (explanation)

     and that would be associated to the variables `bopt-rainbow' and
     `bopt-blink', where "bopt-" is a prefix that means "beginner
     options",

  2. a code block that would read the variables `bopt-rainbow' and
     `bopt-blink', and do something that would depend on them... for
     example, in a prototype that code block would just display a
     string like "rainbow:yes blink:no".

...but now I have the impression that to do something like that in a
simple way we would need something that has a part in Org and a part
that uses customize - but I don't know how to do that either. I was
expecting that some people would suggest techniques for writing that
prototype, but that did not happen (yet).

Nowadays lots of people suggest that beginners should start learning
Emacs by interacting with pages in Org mode, because Org mode is
similar enough to things that the beginners-from-nowadays already
know. That is not my experience, but that may be because I live in
Brazil, and the beginners that we have here know VERY little - and
also I've been using GNU/Linux since the mid-90s, and I don't know
the things that "all the beginners-from-nowadays know".

Also, when I teach Emacs to beginners I always start by teaching them
how to execute sexps like

  (+ 1 2)

and

  (info "(emacs)User Input")

with C-e C-x C-e - and in the second case they also need to learn how
to go back. I've been having a lot of success with that approach -
but, again, that may be because the beginners here are different from
the beginners from most other places.

Anyway, I was expecting that people would send prototypes...

  Cheers,
    Eduardo Ochs