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From: "Clément Pit--Claudel" <clement.pit@gmail.com>
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Why does the tutorial talk about C-n/C-p etc?
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:41:54 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <56E5B472.1070002@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <83y49me19o.fsf@gnu.org>


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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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  reply	other threads:[~2016-03-13 18:41 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 76+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-03-09 15:38 Why does the tutorial talk about C-n/C-p etc? Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
2016-03-09 15:50 ` jpff
2016-03-09 15:50 ` Oleh Krehel
2016-03-09 16:03   ` Kaushal Modi
2016-03-09 18:25     ` Yuri Khan
2016-03-10 20:28       ` Alexey Veretennikov
2016-03-09 16:48   ` Drew Adams
2016-03-09 18:26     ` Yuri Khan
2016-03-09 19:05       ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-09 19:07       ` Drew Adams
2016-03-09 19:21         ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-10  5:48   ` Tom
2016-03-09 16:12 ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-09 16:39 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-09 17:11 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-03-09 20:22 ` John Wiegley
2016-03-09 21:32   ` Tim Cross
2016-03-09 21:42     ` John Wiegley
2016-03-10  0:30     ` Evgeny Panasyuk
2016-03-10  5:54       ` Tom
2016-03-10  7:12         ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-10 12:49         ` Evgeny Panasyuk
2016-03-10 21:22       ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-10 21:39         ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-10 22:06           ` Evgeny Panasyuk
2016-03-12  1:53             ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-10  6:46 ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-10  9:58   ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-10 10:26     ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-10 14:45       ` Stefan Monnier
2016-03-10 15:07       ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-10 15:42         ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-10 15:48           ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-03-10 16:16             ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-10 17:47               ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-03-11 11:21         ` Filipp Gunbin
2016-03-11 11:38           ` Yuri Khan
2016-03-11 14:40             ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-11 16:57               ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-11 17:34                 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-03-11 18:11                 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-11 22:00                   ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-12  6:51                     ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-12  7:17                       ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-03-12 23:30                         ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-12 23:26                       ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-12  1:52         ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-10 23:26     ` John Wiegley
2016-03-11  2:10       ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-11  8:01         ` Dani Moncayo
2016-03-13 10:54           ` H. Dieter Wilhelm
2016-03-13 17:09             ` Stefan Monnier
2016-03-11 16:45       ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-12 19:25         ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-12 20:09           ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-13 11:36             ` Tom
2016-03-13 16:36               ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-13 17:08                 ` Stefan Monnier
2016-03-13 17:27                   ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-13 18:41                     ` Clément Pit--Claudel [this message]
2016-03-13 19:03                       ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-13 19:14                         ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-13 20:27                         ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-03-14 12:16                         ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-14 14:14                           ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-15 15:19                             ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-13 19:46                       ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-13 20:15                         ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2016-03-14 12:15               ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-14 12:15             ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-14 16:33               ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-03-12 21:34           ` John Wiegley
2016-03-12 23:33             ` Phillip Lord
2016-03-12  1:50     ` Richard Stallman
2016-03-12 19:14       ` Chad Brown
2016-03-12 21:05         ` Evgeny Panasyuk

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