From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:39:41 +0300 (IDT) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019626962 6625 127.0.0.1 (24 Apr 2002 05:42:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 05:42:42 +0000 (UTC) Cc: xemacs-design@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 170FYA-0001ik-00 for ; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:42:42 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 170FZh-00014t-00 for ; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:44:17 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 170FXp-0007Ko-00; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:42:21 -0400 Original-Received: from is.elta.co.il ([199.203.121.2]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 170FWv-0007Jy-00 for ; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:41:25 -0400 Original-Received: from is (is [199.203.121.2]) by is.elta.co.il (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id JAA05525; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:39:41 +0300 (IDT) X-Sender: eliz@is Original-To: Terje Bless In-Reply-To: Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:3159 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:3159 On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Terje Bless wrote: > In the context of this specific discussion, I'm refusing to read the manual > partly to illustrate a point and partially because it allows me the > "innocent" perspective. That's perfectly okay, but I'm deeply convinced that a tool of such flexibility cannot be used without consulting the documentation to some extent. We need to make that documentation more accessible and more efficient in answering the specific question the user might have at any given point, but the look alone is IMHO insufficient to tell the user about all the possible gestures and operations she has at her disposal. Making Emacs more intuitive requires an effort; making the docs more useful requires an effort as well. These two efforts should be balanced, IMHO; saying that documentation should be (almost) irrelevant promotes the idea that one effort should be favored at the expense of the other, which I think is not a good idea, because I think it's impossible to reduce the need in documentation to the low level of the kind I thought you were asking for. > it's very easy > to assume the position that if someone can't be bothered to put in a little > effort to manage on their own, they don't deserve hand-holding from those > that have put in a lot of effort over a lot of time to acquire the > expertise they have. I didn't assume such a position; if my wording somehow hinted of that, I apologize. I was merely trying to figure out the peculiar (to me) position of trying to use a compex tool without consulting the docs. In my experience, reading the manual once or twice is not enough: it is too large to remember. You need to consult the manual every time you have a specific problem, using the manual as a reference. Facilities such as `i' are a big help here. I would even go as far as telling not to read the manual in its entirety at all, even once, except for the first few sections about the basics. Instead, wait until you have a specific problem and look that up.