From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Samuel Mikes Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Tutorials and Demos (Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 14:10:21 -0600 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020417123512.0398e4c8@san-francisco.beasys.com> <200204201727.g3KHRTg01417@aztec.santafe.edu> Reply-To: Samuel Mikes NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019592750 21475 127.0.0.1 (23 Apr 2002 20:12:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 20:12:30 +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 1706eM-0005aG-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 22:12:30 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 1706fh-00053l-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 22:13:53 +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 1706e8-0000Rx-00; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 16:12:16 -0400 Original-Received: from h24-86-152-135.ed.shawcable.net ([24.86.152.135] helo=marvin.cubane.com) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 1706cQ-0000Cu-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 16:10:30 -0400 Original-Received: by marvin.cubane.com (Postfix, from userid 501) id E69F71AC01F; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 14:10:27 -0600 (MDT) X-Mailer: 21.4 (patch 6) "Common Lisp" XEmacs Lucid (via feedmail 10 I); VM 7.00 under 21.4 (patch 6) "Common Lisp" XEmacs Lucid Original-To: Brady Montz In-Reply-To: X-Attribution: smikes 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:3131 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:3131 Brady> 3. I want demos or examples. For some things, just having a Brady> little sandbox buffer seeded with apropriate text would be Brady> Obviously, demos/examples are very specific, and would Brady> probably be written by the code's authors or other interested Brady> parties. Having a nice support mechanism for this to make it Brady> as simple as possible, along with the consensus to move Brady> What would be totally sweet is if a demo could be hooked up Brady> with customize. Have one frame with my customize options, and Brady> another with my demo. change this option, rerun, change that, Brady> try again, etc. Brady> And yes, I'd be happy to help write it. I hacked up something in this line. You can see the c-mode tutorial that I'm working on as an example: http://www.cubane.com/c-mode-tutorial.tar.gz ftp://ftp.cubane.com/pub/c-mode-tutorial.tar.gz The tutorial code embeds pushbutton widgets in the tutorial buffer. The syntax is very simple but should be sufficient for simple tutorials; I wrote some helper functions to pop up example buffers. For example, you could make a pushbutton run (customize-variable 'c-default-style). I have tested it on XEmacs 21.4 on msw and tty. I don't currently have a modern GNU Emacs, but I believe GNU Emacs >19 comes with widget and wid-edit, so it should work. My original motivation for writing this particular tutorial comes from helping with an undergrad intro programming course some years ago. The students would sit down at a Windows box and telnet to the unix machine. They'd start emacs to write some code, then kill emacs, compile the code, memorize the line number of the first syntax error, restart emacs, fix the syntax error, kill emacs, ... If tutorials like this would be useful, (some of) the next questions are: o What would make the tutorial easier to use? o What needs to happen for them to be distributed with Emacs/XEmacs? o What is a good way to guide users towards the tutorials? I don't think a talking paperclip would be appropriate, but maybe the first time you enter c-mode, a prompt such as: "This is the first time you've used c-mode. Would you like to see a short tutorial about writing C in Emacs? (yes/no/Never offer me a tutorial again) " Please send comments/criticism on the tutorial to smikes@cubane.com. -- Sam Mikes smikes@cubane.com