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: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:10:23 +0100 Message-ID: References: <877hp5e2op.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> 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 1272997931 6176 80.91.229.12 (4 May 2010 18:32:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 18:32:11 +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 20:32:09 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 1O9Muf-0007dO-0C for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 May 2010 20:32:09 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:60364 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O9Mue-0000qH-Fi for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 May 2010 14:32:08 -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: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:10:23 -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: Original-Lines: 16 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 81.221.201.1 Original-X-Trace: sv3-9DctySrahEXrzK+0e3Ou3VuitaYExVqs79xnS6KIVjlou1tMAM2JQ3A+ccurwOIFCHc196xm2y9hH5t!/X3dniDjb5TxIbCVNKjmqbV9JcjmIFT/eMjkExVR1uCJpwabm4c0IAgMYdBeWgYP9CeVRYg6EEC5!4AN3xuVGGA== 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:177549 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:73041 Archived-At: > But isn't that what describe-function or describe-variable are for? First you have to know what you want to describe. How is one to discover what functions, variables, etc are available? After decades of using emacs, I'm still sometimes surprised by discovering something I didn't know about and would never have thought to "describe". I'm not in the midst of a community of emacs users, so asking questions and learning new things is a rather heavyweight process for me -- there's no one to look over my shoulder and make suggestions. That, and the difficulty of emacs documentation, have been a real hindrance to my becoming a better programmer of emacs. But I'll still take it over anything else I know of. Power to the people! djc