From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "akaiser@visi.com" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Failing to see the allure of Emacs Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:41:57 +0100 Message-ID: References: <877hp5e2op.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <87pr2u7ie3.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <9uudnY0F7J_qFjfWnZ2dnUVZ8oCdnZ2d@posted.visi> <87mxxweqr6.fsf@rapttech.com.au> Reply-To: djc@resiak.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1272998896 10378 80.91.229.12 (4 May 2010 18:48:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 18:48:16 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue May 04 20:48:15 2010 connect(): No such file or directory Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O9NAE-0000db-V9 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 May 2010 20:48:15 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:60538 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O9NAE-0007jC-2r for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 May 2010 14:48:14 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.glorb.com!news2.glorb.com!news.glorb.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.posted.visi!news.posted.visi.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:42:17 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100227 Thunderbird/3.0.3 Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help In-Reply-To: <87mxxweqr6.fsf@rapttech.com.au> Original-Lines: 26 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 81.221.201.1 Original-X-Trace: sv3-Gi4UDxPDBsN8G5Yz9VdUkVhzc1iVGiBAl4mQFLUWnhtnq1ga1d3GPug9X4f9e9L/Z4Mkph+XPSnxzMR!3ryK4anZMLFzVEfVB2UPGJntI2WvJN+oBYnKuZijV1Xxqcq74z1BgyJ64+kWscq5XBJ5suPm1OXa!PVpYaMowyg== Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@visi.com X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@visi.com X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:177567 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:73055 Archived-At: Dear friends, no one is immune from criticism, but I've noted with amusement how the discussion is wandering astray with misreading and misunderstanding. Did I say "that emacs lacked documentation"? No. Has "no one suggested that you read the source code"? Someone did. Are the important manuals all up to date? Obviously not. Is the documentation complete? Clearly, no. Is there lots of useful stuff there? Sure. Is it readily usable? For some people, for some purposes. But if determined, competent, insightful people sat down to design documentation that would be complete, most usable, and most helpful over a range of users, the current emacs documentation isn't what they'd come up with. Far from it. Ask any talented documentation professional. Maybe you're motivated to track down what I've done in free software, and what documentation I've created. But I can't do it all. I appreciate the work other determined people put in on emacs (and other free software) and documentation, but it's not immune to criticism and suggestion. Otherwise how will we improve things? We're colleagues here, and we're all in the same bus. Let's not browbeat one another, and let's not deceive ourselves. emacs is The One True Editor. It's a work of genius, and I've written about why that is. But I wish it had better documentation. djc