From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Drew Adams" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: RE: help-fns.el patch for commands to describe options and commands Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:30:38 -0700 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1192990853 29170 80.91.229.12 (21 Oct 2007 18:20:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:20:53 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 21 20:20:54 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IjfPq-0002Kb-Qx for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:20:47 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IjfPj-0002fQ-2Q for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:20:39 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IjfMS-0006QE-Mt for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:17:16 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IjfMO-0006Lj-IN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:17:15 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IjfMO-0006LJ-BC for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:17:12 -0400 Original-Received: from mx20.gnu.org ([199.232.41.8]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Ijf6y-0007lL-2C; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:01:16 -0400 Original-Received: from agminet01.oracle.com ([141.146.126.228]) by mx20.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1IjehE-0005XX-B9; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:34:40 -0400 Original-Received: from rgmgw1.us.oracle.com (rgmgw1.us.oracle.com [138.1.186.110]) by agminet01.oracle.com (Switch-3.2.4/Switch-3.1.7) with ESMTP id l9LHVMeH016174; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:31:22 -0500 Original-Received: from acsmt351.oracle.com (acsmt351.oracle.com [141.146.40.151]) by rgmgw1.us.oracle.com (Switch-3.2.4/Switch-3.2.4) with ESMTP id l9LHJDVZ007910; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:31:21 -0600 Original-Received: from 141.144.88.58 by acsmt350.oracle.com with ESMTP id 3308838681192987814; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:30:14 -0700 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198 X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAQAAAAI= X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAQAAAAI= X-Whitelist: TRUE X-Whitelist: TRUE X-detected-kernel: by mx20.gnu.org: Linux 2.4-2.6 X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:81384 Archived-At: > > I don't think this is is going to be useful for newbies. They won't > > learn these commands. > > Reason? Why not useful? Why not learnable? > > Because there are limits to how much a person can learn. Newbies to > Emacs are overloaded already. They see lots of commands and learn > only a few of them. Offering them one more thing to learn won't do > any good -- they can't learn MORE. Knowledge is not strictly quantitative: just a bin of beans with a fixed capacity. Learning these can mean not needing to learn some other things right away. Learning `C-h c' for `describe-command' is more useful to a newbie than learning `C-h c' for `describe-key-briefly'. (And it's a better mnemonic.) Newbies need `describe-option' more than `describe-variable', so they should learn it first (as `C-h o'). When they later delve more into Emacs and Lisp, they can learn `C-h v' (if there is still room in the ol' bin for one more bean).