Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[SimpleCode]

I am a emacs newbie but I like it.

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[William Case]

Hi SimpleCode;

I am a newbie as well.  There are lots of tutorials around, but the one
that did the most for me was:

http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/emacs-lisp-intro/html_mono/emacs-lisp-intro.html

For two years I learnt emacs by rote and by copying.  Everything I tried
to do lead to errors and frustration.  It has taken me 5 or 6
intermittent hours of following the text and trying the few samples in
the emacs-lisp-intro to finally get it.  The intro is well written,
clear and covers the main concepts at a learnable pace.  Now that I
understand basic concepts of how emacs and lisp work, I love it.

The site mentioned above is an HTML version of the GNU emacs-lisp intro
-- take your pick; the content is the same.

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 19:27 -0700, SimpleCode wrote:
> I am a emacs newbie but I like it.
> 
It is worth the trouble.

-- 
Regards Bill

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Amy Templeton]

Check out the emacs wiki
(http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki) and the GNU
Project's Emacs page (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/).
If you browse through the wiki and search for things that
seem neat you'll come across a lot of good stuff. Google is
also a friend here.

Oh, and if you want to learn more about emacs, try C-h t
(control+h, then t) to fire up the tutorial and/or C-h i to
get at the *very* handy Info documentation. Familiarize
yourself with the options in the C-h menu. They prove to be
great boons if you continue to use Emacs.

Enjoy!

Amy

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[SimpleCode]

William Case 写道：
> Hi SimpleCode;
>
> I am a newbie as well.  There are lots of tutorials around, but the one
> that did the most for me was:
>
> http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/emacs-lisp-intro/html_mono/emacs-lisp-intro.html
>
> For two years I learnt emacs by rote and by copying.  Everything I tried
> to do lead to errors and frustration.  It has taken me 5 or 6
> intermittent hours of following the text and trying the few samples in
> the emacs-lisp-intro to finally get it.  The intro is well written,
> clear and covers the main concepts at a learnable pace.  Now that I
> understand basic concepts of how emacs and lisp work, I love it.
>
> The site mentioned above is an HTML version of the GNU emacs-lisp intro
> -- take your pick; the content is the same.
>
> On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 19:27 -0700, SimpleCode wrote:
> > I am a emacs newbie but I like it.
> >
> It is worth the trouble.

Hi Bill, I have the same feeling.
I always think the Emacs which is hard to use.So I normally use VIM. I
thought it is comfortable for me.
I just want to try Emacs because of the various Plug-in in it, and
they are very powerful, especially for the programmer.

By the way, I don't wanna learn the emacs-lisp, also I don't know
should I.
Regards Lung

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[William Case]

Hi Lung;

I am responding to your last post because it might be useful to you and
to others who are trying to use Emacs for the first time.

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 22:31 -0700, SimpleCode wrote:
> William Case 写道：
> > Hi SimpleCode;
> >
> > I am a newbie as well.  There are lots of tutorials around, but the one
> > that did the most for me was:
> >
> > http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/emacs-lisp-intro/html_mono/emacs-lisp-intro.html
> >
> > For two years I learnt emacs by rote and by copying.  Everything I tried
> > to do lead to errors and frustration.  It has taken me 5 or 6
> > intermittent hours of following the text and trying the few samples in
> > the emacs-lisp-intro to finally get it.  The intro is well written,
> > clear and covers the main concepts at a learnable pace.  Now that I
> > understand basic concepts of how emacs and lisp work, I love it.
> >
> > The site mentioned above is an HTML version of the GNU emacs-lisp intro
> > -- take your pick; the content is the same.
> >
> > On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 19:27 -0700, SimpleCode wrote:
> > > I am a emacs newbie but I like it.
> > >
> > It is worth the trouble.
> 
> Hi Bill, I have the same feeling.
> I always think the Emacs which is hard to use.So I normally use VIM. I
> thought it is comfortable for me.
> I just want to try Emacs because of the various Plug-in in it, and
> they are very powerful, especially for the programmer.
> 
> By the way, I don't wanna learn the emacs-lisp, also I don't know
> should I.

I recommend this tutorial, not because it will make you a lisp
programmer. It won't.  There is a long way to go before that happens.
But once you understand how Lisp and emacs work, anything you want to do
or anything you want to understand becomes exceedingly simple.  I can
see why professional programmers use Emacs.  Contrary to my newbie
belief, the Emacs environment does not get in the way of the real
programming task you may be trying to perform.  Everything that you
might want to do becomes intuitive, and if it isn't intuitive to you,
you can make it so that it is.

In the last couple of weeks since I have worked my way through the
tutorial, I can now without, confusion, frustration, anger and/or
disappointment customize any part of Emacs I want, understand functions
(commands) and how to read them, bind commands to keys, work in various
modes sometimes interchangeably, and on and on.

Two metaphors come to mind.  A good workman should understand how to use
his tools.  For me the tutorial was the same as learning how to sharpen
a chisel, knife or saw blade.  To extend the metaphor, I can now cut far
more materials into better shapes than ever could before on anything
else I have used.

The other metaphor is a comparison to the day that debits and credits in
accounting finally clicked into place.  That day a whole new balanced
view of the world opened up to me.  Lisp's mind twist into utter
simplicity is only matched by the simplicity of double entry
bookkeeping.

So -- to me, the Tutorial is worth the five or six hours it takes.  To
me -- it is the precursor to reading or studying anything else like
O'Reily publications and others.  And -- I highly recommend it to anyone
else starting out.



-- 
Regards Bill

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Sebastian Tennant]

Quoth William Case <billlinux@rogers.com>:
>  Lisp's mind twist into utter simplicity is only matched by the
> simplicity of double entry bookkeeping.

Funny, earlier in this thread I found myself saying 'it's so simple it
hurts'.

Don't you think we should be careful with the 'it's really simple'
language beacuse it's definitely _not_ simple to a newcomer?

I guess the point I'm really making isn't a point at all.  I just want
Lung to know that an understanding of the underlying simplicity is
really, really, _really_ worth the effort.

Sebastian

P.S. That double-entry bookkeeping thing... How about an 'off-topic'
     thread so that we can all impress our bank managers ;-)  Ah,
     those were the days...

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[William Case]

Hi Sebastian;

It's Friday afternoon, I live in a government city (Ottawa) so all work
has stopped, and your dealing with a recent Emacs zealot.

On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 22:51 +0300, Sebastian Tennant wrote:
> Quoth William Case <billlinux@rogers.com>:
> >  Lisp's mind twist into utter simplicity is only matched by the
> > simplicity of double entry bookkeeping.
> 
> Funny, earlier in this thread I found myself saying 'it's so simple it
> hurts'.
> 
Yea, I thought I would toss it back and see if anyone caught it.

> Don't you think we should be careful with the 'it's really simple'
> language beacuse it's definitely _not_ simple to a newcomer?
> 
Your right.  One shouldn't confuse simplicity with easy.


> I guess the point I'm really making isn't a point at all.  I just want
> Lung to know that an understanding of the underlying simplicity is
> really, really, _really_ worth the effort.
> 
> Sebastian
> 
> P.S. That double-entry bookkeeping thing... How about an 'off-topic'
>      thread so that we can all impress our bank managers ;-)  Ah,
>      those were the days...

I was trying to use the metaphor to say Emacs is difficult as long as
you bring a lot of incorrect assumption to it.  Its worth sticking at it
until the day of "epiphany" when you finally get it (the actual
simplicity of the thing with no assumptions needed).  At least that was
how it worked for me with debits and credits, and Emacs.

-- 
Regards Bill

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Sebastian Tennant]

Quoth William Case <billlinux@rogers.com>:
> It's Friday afternoon, I live in a government city (Ottawa) so all work
> has stopped, and your dealing with a recent Emacs zealot.

It's nearly midnight in İstanbul (that's Istanbul in case Unicode
doesn't work for you) and everyone I know is out drinking.

>> Don't you think we should be careful with the 'it's really simple'
>> language beacuse it's definitely _not_ simple to a newcomer?
>> 
> Your right.  One shouldn't confuse simplicity with easy.

Language (at least the English language) let's us down at this point.

>> P.S. That double-entry bookkeeping thing... How about an 'off-topic'
>>      thread so that we can all impress our bank managers ;-)  Ah,
>>      those were the days...
>
> I was trying to use the metaphor to say Emacs is difficult as long as
> you bring a lot of incorrect assumption to it.  Its worth sticking at it
> until the day of "epiphany" when you finally get it (the actual
> simplicity of the thing with no assumptions needed).  At least that was
> how it worked for me with debits and credits, and Emacs.

The only assumptions I bring to accounting are that the whole thing is
a waste of time!  As people will begin to realise when we start running
Economy 2.0 :-)

Sebastian

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[SimpleCode]

Hi, Sebastian Tennant, William Case
Your both help were greatly appreciated.
I think you reach the same goal by different routes.

Actually,I like the learning method of explaining the profound things
in a simple way.
But I often have a little time, I look for a short cut to deal with
emacs.

We can choose the best learning method for us, this is the most
important, I think.

--------
regards
Lung

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Christian Herenz]

SimpleCode schrieb:
> I am a emacs newbie but I like it.
>   
Hi,
I personally liked this page for getting into it:
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs.html

Greetz,
Christian

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Sebastian Tennant]

> I am a emacs newbie but I like it.

Congratulations.  You've stumbled on the single most universally
useful program ever written!  The learning curve can be steep at first
(all those keystrokes!!!) but trust me you will never look back once
you begin to make it work for you.

Emacs' own Info manual is indispensible, and it is never far away once
you master *Info* (type C-h i m emacs RET and you are there).

The various help keystrokes (especially C-h m for describe-mode and
C-h v for describe-variable) are also very useful.

My advice would be to become very comfortable with *Info* mode and
'bookmarks' so you never need to forget where you read something
again.

 C-x r m <name> RET  to create a bookmark,
 C-x r b <name> RET  to go to a bookmark,
 C-x r l             to list your bookmarks

Good luck, and don't give up.  It seems like deep magic but it's
actually so simple it hurts.

Sebastian

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[SimpleCode]

Sebastian Tennant 写道：
> > I am a emacs newbie but I like it.
>
> Congratulations.  You've stumbled on the single most universally
> useful program ever written!  The learning curve can be steep at first
> (all those keystrokes!!!) but trust me you will never look back once
> you begin to make it work for you.
>
> Emacs' own Info manual is indispensible, and it is never far away once
> you master *Info* (type C-h i m emacs RET and you are there).
>
> The various help keystrokes (especially C-h m for describe-mode and
> C-h v for describe-variable) are also very useful.
>
> My advice would be to become very comfortable with *Info* mode and
> 'bookmarks' so you never need to forget where you read something
> again.
>
>  C-x r m <name> RET  to create a bookmark,
>  C-x r b <name> RET  to go to a bookmark,
>  C-x r l             to list your bookmarks
>
> Good luck, and don't give up.  It seems like deep magic but it's
> actually so simple it hurts.
>
Thank you very much for your encouraging and advice, Sebastian.
I make up my mind to learn to use emacs this time.
I don't give up and half step!

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Sebastian Tennant]

Quoth SimpleCode <DragonXLong@gmail.com>:
> Thank you very much for your encouraging and advice, Sebastian.
> I make up my mind to learn to use emacs this time.
> I don't give up and half step!

The other thing you should do is buy a book and read it in the bath.
(It must be in the bath :-)

I don't know where in the world you are, or if you already have a
book, but I could send you my old "Learning GNU Emacs (2nd Edition)",
published by O'Reily, if you like?

Email me off-list with your mailing address and it's yours.

Sebastian

P.S. It's out-of-date in many ways, but there are lots of important
     things that haven't changed

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[Tyler Smith]

On 2007-05-04, Sebastian Tennant <sebyte@smolny.plus.com> wrote:
>
> I don't know where in the world you are, or if you already have a
> book, but I could send you my old "Learning GNU Emacs (2nd Edition)",
> published by O'Reily, if you like?
>

Take him up on that offer! That's a great book. I learned Emacs (or at
least, started to learn) using three important resources:

1 - the online tutorial. It's a bit imposing for a rank beginner, but
it introduces all the basics in about an hour

2- the oreilly book. More thorough discussions of the most common
tools, a good follow-on from the tutorial.

3- the official docs. I bought hardcopies of the GNU Emacs manual and
learning emacs lisp. A little too comprehensive and terse at first, but
once you've worked through some of the o'reilly book and used Emacs a
bit, they are chock-full of useful details. They are available free as
part of Emacs too.

The most important thing is not to worry about learning everything at
once. I started off with the basics, just kill (C-k), yank (C-y), and
save-file (C-x C-s). Whenever I find myself doing anything over and
over again, I look up the function to automate it. That way it's easy
to remember stuff, as you're always learning something that's
immediately and repeatedly useful.


Cheers,

Tyler

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[SimpleCode]

Tyler Smith 写道：
> On 2007-05-04, Sebastian Tennant <sebyte@smolny.plus.com> wrote:
> >
> > I don't know where in the world you are, or if you already have a
> > book, but I could send you my old "Learning GNU Emacs (2nd Edition)",
> > published by O'Reily, if you like?
> >
>
> Take him up on that offer! That's a great book. I learned Emacs (or at
> least, started to learn) using three important resources:
>
> 1 - the online tutorial. It's a bit imposing for a rank beginner, but
> it introduces all the basics in about an hour
>
> 2- the oreilly book. More thorough discussions of the most common
> tools, a good follow-on from the tutorial.
>
> 3- the official docs. I bought hardcopies of the GNU Emacs manual and
> learning emacs lisp. A little too comprehensive and terse at first, but
> once you've worked through some of the o'reilly book and used Emacs a
> bit, they are chock-full of useful details. They are available free as
> part of Emacs too.
>
> The most important thing is not to worry about learning everything at
> once. I started off with the basics, just kill (C-k), yank (C-y), and
> save-file (C-x C-s). Whenever I find myself doing anything over and
> over again, I look up the function to automate it. That way it's easy
> to remember stuff, as you're always learning something that's
> immediately and repeatedly useful.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tyler

Great, I got it.
Thank you^-^

kind
lung

Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[don provan]

SimpleCode <DragonXLong@gmail.com> writes:

> I am a emacs newbie but I like it.

I hope I'm not repeating something someone already said that I missed,
but for a newbie learning to negotiate the emacs keyboard commands,
the Emacs Reference card cannot be beat:

   http://refcards.com/docs/gildeas/gnu-emacs/emacs-refcard-a4.pdf

Just print it out, fold it up, and keep it next to your keyboard.
In addition to making it easy to look up and learn all the key
strokes, it's a physical reminder of The One True Binding, thus
discouraging you from rebinding kill-line to ^d because you think
"delete line" makes more sense.

(Of course, you are free to rebind all the keys if you want to deal
with your own bindings, but most new emacs users that live with the
standard bindings quickly find that the defaults make as much and
typically more sense than any binding they would have come up with
themselves.)

I think a lot of the other posts were talking about elisp programming,
which, of course, is also important, but I wanted to cover simple
program operation for newbies that are still more worried about using
emacs than in customizing it.

-don provan