tip of the day?

tip of the day?

[Drew Adams]

A thread on help-emacs-windows gave me this idea. I don't know if it's
already been implemented in some way in the past. (Perhaps I need a tip of
the day, to let me know that tip-of-the-day exists!)

Why not exploit the yow/cookie mechanism or something similar to provide a
tip-of-the-day that Emacs users can turn on? Or, just bring up the Emacs
manual at some node as a tip of the day.

In the latter case, the node could be chosen from a selected list of
introductory nodes, perhaps organized by category (e.g. novice vs advanced,
or by subject area), so that some planning went into deciding what to
present, or it could just be chosen at random. Users might even configure
whether they want a random high-level node or to follow the plan.

Years ago, I used yow or cookie (I don't remember) to pop up a random haiku
from a huge file of haikus. That's what made me think this might be one way
to provide a tip of the day. But it would be much easier (no file to
create), and probably better for the user (because s?he can explore from
there), to pop up a manual node.

Some applications use such a tip-of-the-day feature, turning it on by
default, so that new users see a tip at each application startup. Usually,
when the tip pops up, it has a check box that you can uncheck to turn it off
so you never see it again.

Depending on what you are trying to do, what the application is, and how
good the tips are, this feature can be annoying or surprisingly useful.
Because the Emacs manual is so good and so rich, I think this would be
useful for Emacs. But we would need to provide an easy way to turn it off,
because it will surely annoy some of the people some of the time.

Re: tip of the day?

[Andreas Roehler]

Drew Adams schrieb:
> A thread on help-emacs-windows gave me this idea. I don't know if it's
> already been implemented in some way in the past. (Perhaps I need a tip of
> the day, to let me know that tip-of-the-day exists!)
>
> Why not exploit the yow/cookie mechanism or something similar to provide a
> tip-of-the-day that Emacs users can turn on? Or, just bring up the Emacs
> manual at some node as a tip of the day.
>
> In the latter case, the node could be chosen from a selected list of
> introductory nodes, perhaps organized by category (e.g. novice vs advanced,
> or by subject area), so that some planning went into deciding what to
> present, or it could just be chosen at random. Users might even configure
> whether they want a random high-level node or to follow the plan.
>
> Years ago, I used yow or cookie (I don't remember) to pop up a random haiku
> from a huge file of haikus. That's what made me think this might be one way
> to provide a tip of the day. But it would be much easier (no file to
> create), and probably better for the user (because s?he can explore from
> there), to pop up a manual node.
>
> Some applications use such a tip-of-the-day feature, turning it on by
> default, so that new users see a tip at each application startup. Usually,
> when the tip pops up, it has a check box that you can uncheck to turn it off
> so you never see it again.
>
> Depending on what you are trying to do, what the application is, and how
> good the tips are, this feature can be annoying or surprisingly useful.
> Because the Emacs manual is so good and so rich, I think this would be
> useful for Emacs. But we would need to provide an easy way to turn it off,
> because it will surely annoy some of the people some of the time.
>
>   

IMO with haikus or small sentences as from fortune it's
another thing as with the Manual.

The matter Emacs covers is so vaste, that I can't
imagine a usefull approach beside studying it along
some line.

Others may take it different. Thanks to be initiative
anyway.

__
Andreas Roehler

RE: tip of the day?

[Drew Adams]

    IMO with haikus or small sentences as from fortune it's
    another thing as with the Manual.

    The matter Emacs covers is so vaste, that I can't
    imagine a usefull approach beside studying it along
    some line.

    Others may take it different. Thanks to be initiative anyway.

BTW, the Emacs wiki has a link that opens a random page on the wiki.
Surprising, sometimes.

Re: tip of the day?

[Mathias Dahl]

> A thread on help-emacs-windows gave me this idea. I don't know if it's
> already been implemented in some way in the past. (Perhaps I need a tip of
> the day, to let me know that tip-of-the-day exists!)

I like the idea. Now and then I stumble upon things I did not know
existed in Emacs, often while looking for something completely
different. Just opening up a random manual page could  prove to be
quite useful.

Re: tip of the day?

[Miles Bader]

"Mathias Dahl" <mathias.dahl@gmail.com> writes:
> I like the idea. Now and then I stumble upon things I did not know
> existed in Emacs, often while looking for something completely
> different. Just opening up a random manual page could  prove to be
> quite useful.

I was a bit skeptical of this idea:  I thought maybe just the first few
lines of an info node might not be interesting enough to hook people.

But I've just gone and looked at a bunch of random nodes in the Emacs
manual, and I think that, by Emacs, it may just work!

-mile
-- 
My spirit felt washed.  With blood.  [Eli Shin, on "The Passion of the Christ"]

Re: tip of the day?

[Mathias Dahl]

> I was a bit skeptical of this idea:  I thought maybe just the first few
> lines of an info node might not be interesting enough to hook people.

> But I've just gone and looked at a bunch of random nodes in the Emacs
> manual, and I think that, by Emacs, it may just work!

Yes, before reading some of them, I would have been skeptical too. But
they are so well written and mostly a pleasure to read.

Re: tip of the day?

[Richard Stallman]

    Why not exploit the yow/cookie mechanism or something similar to provide a
    tip-of-the-day that Emacs users can turn on? Or, just bring up the Emacs
    manual at some node as a tip of the day.

It is a good idea, if people want to write a list of such tips.

Re: tip of the day?

[Richard Stallman]

    I like the idea. Now and then I stumble upon things I did not know
    existed in Emacs, often while looking for something completely
    different. Just opening up a random manual page could  prove to be
    quite useful.

The suggestion, as I understood it, was to present randomly selected
tips.  I took this to mean short hints that people would write for
this specific purpose.  Randomly selecting a spot in the manual would
be a totally different feature.  If some people find that useful, I
have nothing against it, but please don't consider the two ideas
interchangeable.

Tips would be good for helping beginners become intermediate users.
Randomly selecting parts of the manual could be interesting for more
knowledgeable users, but would not help beginners.

I think the tips would be more useful than the random manual text
presenter.  But we could have both.

RE: tip of the day?

[Drew Adams]

        I like the idea. Now and then I stumble upon things I did not know
        existed in Emacs, often while looking for something completely
        different. Just opening up a random manual page could  prove to be
        quite useful.

    The suggestion, as I understood it, was to present randomly selected
    tips.  I took this to mean short hints that people would write for
    this specific purpose.  Randomly selecting a spot in the manual would
    be a totally different feature.  If some people find that useful, I
    have nothing against it, but please don't consider the two ideas
    interchangeable.

    Tips would be good for helping beginners become intermediate users.
    Randomly selecting parts of the manual could be interesting for more
    knowledgeable users, but would not help beginners.

    I think the tips would be more useful than the random manual text
    presenter.  But we could have both.

Actually, I did suggest both (as in X or perhaps Y). I agree that either
might be helpful, and yes, they are different.

Short tips written specifically for this purpose could also include - when
appropriate - one or more links to the manual(s), for possible followup.

Re: tip of the day?

[David Hansen]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:37:38 -0700 Drew Adams wrote:

> Short tips written specifically for this purpose could also include - when
> appropriate - one or more links to the manual(s), for possible followup.

On the emacs IRC channel there used to be a "key binding of
the day" in the topic.  I found out about some useful key
bindings this way.  IMHO this would be a nice feature even
for intermediate or even expert users of emacs.

Shouldn't be to hard to find an automatic solution for this,
at least for some set of predefined key maps.

David

RE: tip of the day?

[Drew Adams]

    On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:37:38 -0700 Drew Adams wrote:

    > Short tips written specifically for this purpose could also
    > include - when appropriate - one or more links to the manual(s), for
    > possible followup.

    On the emacs IRC channel there used to be a "key binding of
    the day" in the topic.  I found out about some useful key
    bindings this way.  IMHO this would be a nice feature even
    for intermediate or even expert users of emacs.

    Shouldn't be to hard to find an automatic solution for this,
    at least for some set of predefined key maps.

Good idea. That might even lessen the fury of some over my Info tutorial
proposal, seeing as I originally proposed the tip of the day... Use "key
binding of the day" to fight back against creeping mousism. I like it.

I'm not sure we should have two separate tips of the day, however. We might
just include key-binding tips in the set of tips of the day (of course, then
key-binding tips wouldn't appear every day; they would be mixed with other
tips).

RE: tip of the day?

[Drew Adams]

        > Short tips written specifically for this purpose could also
        > include - when appropriate - one or more links to the
        > manual(s), for possible followup.

Just in case someone does decide to work on this feature: It would be good
to make the feature general, in such a way that you could use it with
different tips files. That way, for example, a library could have its own
tip-of-the-day file, which would provide tips only about that library.