Re: Why does the tutorial talk about C-n/C-p etc?

["Clément Pit--Claudel" <clement.pit@gmail.com>]

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On 03/13/2016 01:27 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> That would fit most of the tutorial.
> 
> Things that are truly indispensable are mostly those which the readers
> already know: basic cursor motion, inserting a character and deleting
> a character.  The only other necessary stiff is C-x C-f and C-x C-s,
> but those can be replaced by menu-bar commands.

Hey Eli,

Here are a few things that I struggled with when I started using Emacs (phrased in terms of concepts that I was already familiar with)

* Opening and saving a file
* Copying (or cutting) and pasting
* Undoing, and in particular the notion of undoing an undo
* Using C-u as a prefix
* Searching (and replacing)
* The notion of major and minor modes

Interestingly, the tutorial does cover all of this; but it also tried to train me to be efficient at things that I didn't care (like having me jump around the buffer, paging through things with C-v, etc): what I wanted was a five minutes introduction which would:

* Give me enough to survive in Emacs with more or less the same productivity as I has in GEdit (which was pretty low)
* Teach me a few cool features so that I felt compelled to keep using Emacs

Based on this, it would be easy to pick up more stuff along the way.

Speaking of cool features, here are a few ones that are very simple to comprehend, but that I find very useful; I think the tutorial could expose them:

* C-SPC C-SPC to mark a point
* C-u C-SPC to jump to a previously marked point
* C-w marking the following word during a search

In addition, I think many people get attracted to Emacs for a particular programming language, so I like the suggestion of the tutorial branching up into various directions after exposing the basics.

One final idea: maybe the tutorial could showcase more of Emacs' fancy features? Like syntax highlighting, spell checking, image support, indentation, and similar things? Right now it's a plain text buffer in fundamental mode.

Clément


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