Apropos newbies

Apropos newbies

[Andreas Röhler]

As the question of newbies has been raised: I suggest a little change of 
Emacs' didactic:

away from presenting keys first and somehow as the main
issue of Emacs (even if it might be true to some extend
later)

towards a more mnemonic command/function lecturing
approach.

This pertains to the manuals too.

Even if not urgent to rewrite it now, I suggest to say

"The command `next-line' (`C-n')

instead of

"The command `C-n' (`next-line')

for example.

With completion in minibuffer, which every novice
should learn first, hundreds and thousands commands are
called via M-x with reasonable speed, whereas learning all
the keys of them might be a live-long and sometimes
futile task.

Thanks

Andreas Röhler

Re: Apropos newbies

[Richard Stallman]

I think the manuals are better for newbies as they are,
emphasizing the keyboard keys and giving the command
names secondarily.  So I think that change would be a step
backward (as well as a lot of work when there are other things
we need to do).

Thus, I have decided against this change.  But thanks for
offering the suggestion.