Re: guided tour suggestions

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Phil Sung <psung@MIT.EDU> writes:

> Previous suggestions which were made:
>
> * Mention help features earlier
>
>   I now mention the manual close to the beginning, and function documentation
>   right after the section on editing commands.
>
> * Emphasize Emacs as a coding environment
>
>   There are now screenshots of GDB, compile, grep, and shell, and further
>   information about what programming major modes can do.
>
> Again, the draft is at:
> <http://stuff.mit.edu/iap/emacs/emacs-guided-tour-1.html>
>
> If no one objects, I will ask the webmasters to replace the version
> on gnu.org with this soon.

I just took a look at it: Ugh!  This is supposed to _advertise_ Emacs,
and I have enough of a fight convincing people that Emacs has made the
step into the twenty-first century.  The guided tour is completely
unsuitable for that.  It shows an Emacs a) compiled without a modern
toolkit (Gtk+, Windows or Mac) b) without menus c) without toolbars d)
without scrollbars (for heaven's sake!)  e) without font diversity.
The only thing hinting at fonts is a man-page (not info or even
woman-page!)  with some bold headings, and then those headings have
the identical crowded monospace size as the rest.  f) without file
dialogs g) without tooltips h) without any non-ASCII character

The only exception to this theme is a screenshot of a Tetris game,
quite irrelevant.

Would it be possible to make the screenshots with emacs -Q so that
people see what they get out of the box instead of after an
Emacs-18-tty-happy user has finished refurbishing Emacs 22 to a
Zen-like emptiness?

It is, after all, Emacs 22 we are trying to sell to the unwashed
masses.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum