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: Intermediate tutorial shipped with Emacs Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2015 20:42:22 +0300 Message-ID: <83oagypapt.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87a8sjcfr6.fsf@earth.catern.com> <834miqrhza.fsf@gnu.org> <876136zut4.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87wpvmbd5m.fsf@earth.catern.com> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1442684558 27812 80.91.229.3 (19 Sep 2015 17:42:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2015 17:42:38 +0000 (UTC) Cc: stephen@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Spencer Baugh Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 19 19:42:29 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZdM9b-0003iw-RA for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 19:42:27 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:47175 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZdM9a-0001RK-VN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 13:42:26 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:34371) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZdM9X-0001R1-AI for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 13:42:24 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZdM9T-0004f8-9w for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 13:42:23 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:46211) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZdM9T-0004dt-2u for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 13:42:19 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NUX00500Q4G6M00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 20:42:16 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([84.94.185.246]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NUX0056ZQIG1Y40@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Sat, 19 Sep 2015 20:42:16 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <87wpvmbd5m.fsf@earth.catern.com> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 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:190108 Archived-At: > From: Spencer Baugh > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org > Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2015 12:13:25 -0400 > > Still, I think it is important that new users be able to quickly get a > broad sense of the categories of features available in Emacs. Perhaps a > node that links to all these tutorials, and describes the subject area > of each of them in a paragraph or two of text? I think this is impractical. Emacs has so many different categories of features in so many completely unrelated fields of application, that it'd be a challenge to organize such a list in any way that allows a user to quickly find the categories she might be interested in. Keep in mind that just explaining what is included in a category might take a non-trivial amount of text. > That is kind of like the Emacs manual's top node Exactly! So we already have that material in place. > but perhaps more helpful for discovering new features, since it > could be more descriptive than the single-line summaries, and also > have less material to search through by virtue of grouping some > features together. Beware: "more descriptive" might also mean "too long". Discoverability is hampered by having to wade through too long descriptions of the stuff to be discovered. For those reasons, I suggest a bottom-up approach: first let's have a few of such tutorials, and then let's think how to help users discover them. As long as the number of tutorials is small, just their list is good enough, IMO. So we can postpone a more serious "guide to tutorials" when we have enough of them to necessitate such a guide.