From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: TUTORIAL.de updated Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:54:41 +0200 Message-ID: <83ehuu50em.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20120119.140203.338008870.wl@gnu.org> <83pqef4nrx.fsf@gnu.org> <20120120.060022.312018251.wl@gnu.org> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1327042493 10694 80.91.229.12 (20 Jan 2012 06:54:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:54:53 +0000 (UTC) Cc: parozusa@web.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Werner LEMBERG Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jan 20 07:54:49 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ro8N5-00069U-Dy for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:54:47 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:46188 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ro8N4-0004mG-U1 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:54:46 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:56147) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ro8N2-0004mB-Or for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:54:45 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ro8N1-00013T-MR for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:54:44 -0500 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:49989) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ro8N1-00013P-Ee; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:54:43 -0500 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0LY3008004IRZ200@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:54:42 +0200 (IST) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([84.229.115.9]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0LY3008174J5I590@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:54:42 +0200 (IST) In-reply-to: <20120120.060022.312018251.wl@gnu.org> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-Received-From: 80.179.55.172 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:147758 Archived-At: > Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:00:22 +0100 (CET) > Cc: parozusa@web.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org > From: Werner LEMBERG > > > >> Well, a typical US user doesn't need to know how to enter foreign > >> languages, does she? > > > > Probably not, but then why does a German user need a lesson on how > > to type German on her keyboard? > > It is not too uncommon that German users have a US keyboard because > they are programming a lot. The characters [ ] { } are really awkward > to type on a German keyboard. Those awkward characters don't appear in the tutorial, and we certainly don't ask the apprentice to type them as part of her working on the tutorial lessons. > > Is a situation where a native German speaker learns to use Emacs on > > a machine that doesn't already support German input on the OS level > > anything but very rare? > > Well, on my GNU/Linux box, the Quail input methods for German offered > by Emacs are better than SCIM. One main reason is that the latter > disables the use of a `.XCompose' file, which is very bad for me. I > don't know whether the successor of SCIM (I forgot its name) has fixed > this. Emacs makes many things easier and better. That doesn't yet mean we need to put all of them, or even some of them, in the tutorial. > Regardless of the keyboard and input method issues, there are still > three dominant encodings used in Germany and Austria, namely latin-1, > windows-1252, and utf-8, and I consider it important that a user knows > how to force an encoding in case Emacs fails to recognize it properly. With the current Emacs, I don't think the user needs that knowledge as badly as it was needed in v20.x or 21.x. It might be that this section was a must 10 or 8 years ago, but I think nowadays it just gets in the way. > As I said, the MULE section can be certainly improved :-) I submit that MULE is not tutorial stuff. So let's agree to disagree, and let Stefan and Chong make the decision about this.