Re: Emacs Newbie Info Pages

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Summer Emacs <summeremacs@summerstar.me>
> Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2024 19:30:57 +0200
> 
> Hi everyone,

Thank you for your interest in Emacs.

First, about terminology: please don't use the phrase "Info pages".
Unlike man pages, an Info manual is not a collection of
loosely-coupled pages, it is a coherent book with sensible structure
of chapters, sections, and subsections, and with menus and
cross-references between them as appropriate.

> I posted a question in Reddit this morning about having an Emacs newbie info pages on the front of the default Emacs page for complete newbies and first-timers. I know that the splash page already has information links, which are very appreciated, but I think that first time users would be overwhelmed with the information and how to use it. The goal of this project would be the following:
> 
> 1) A very visible (easy to see, and hard to miss) link at the top which says something like “New to Emacs? Click here!”
> 2) A simple “one page” info page with some general information about Emacs and suggested setups. This would include:
> 
> a) The link to the Emacs movement/editing tutorial (vital) and why it is necessary to go through it.
> b) A quick overview for non-coders/devs on how Emacs is special and can be made to look like anything they want it to look like.
> c) An explanation of how to configure Emacs in a basic way with a few links to some suggested configs to get started “out of the box” (I know this is contentious, please don’t bite my head off)
> d) How they can download themes right away with some examples of some basic themes and links to some popular theme packages.
> e) An explanation of some bigger packages which they might be interested in as non-coders (mostly writers or other office jobs) such as: Org-Mode, EWS, Denote, Org-Roam, Fontaine, etc…a quick explanation of what each one does, a link to the page where the information can be found.
> f) How to use the configuration panels if they choose to go that route with a few quick examples for them to try out.

I think something like this will be most useful, if done right.  The
challenge, as always, is to do it right.  And the most challenging
aspect of the above job is to select what to describe and what not to
describe, since Emacs is so large, and since each class of users has
different parts of Emacs that are important enough to be in that
"newbie stuff".

The next challenge is how to have this "newbie stuff" in the face of a
newbie, without annoying newbies and veteran users alike.

> Now, a few things:
> 1) I’m not a dev. This is just my take from a non-dev perspective.
> 2) I’ve heard there was work on a wizard setup a while back but that it never went anywhere. My suggestion is to use the info pages instead of a wizard, but to make a newbie “home base” for new users which won’t overwhelm them. I’ve already written about 3 pages but it is very rough and needs a lot of work, links put in, and a lot of editing because my tone is very different from the tone of the manuals. I’ve never written a tutorial before, so I’m going to need some volunteers to help me with some of this stuff.
> 3) I don’t know what it takes to include such a thing into Emacs proper. I don’t know how to patch things, or know what the specifics are for submitting things in a proper way. Please don’t hold that against me - I’m willing to learn.
> 
> I wanted to write this email to put something concrete down rather than just say “Emacs needs to be better for newbs” and not do anything about it. Somebody suggest that I actually do, so I’m going to try.

If we are talking about an Info manual or a tutorial, then just
writing the text to be included there would go a long way towards the
goal.  Someone else can then add markup and install the result in the
Emacs sources, but that is mostly a technical job that has few if any
challenges.

So if you want to propose a text to the above effect, please do, and
TIA.