From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Evans Winner Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: problem with emacs wiki Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:55:48 -0600 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <86fxrk65or.fsf@timbral.net> References: <17c9e6d6-4b78-49ae-b95e-053037b05ef3@a9g2000prl.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1213155791 25570 80.91.229.12 (11 Jun 2008 03:43:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:43:11 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jun 11 05:43:54 2008 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 4.50) id 1K6HFD-00076W-TF for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:43:32 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:56345 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1K6HEQ-0006fn-Fu for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:42:42 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!news3.google.com!feeder1-2.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder1-1.proxad.net!club-internet.fr!feedme-small.clubint.net!aioe.org!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 56 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: tHL7Pw00KvzSeEbptdOqCQ.user.aioe.org Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org Cancel-Lock: sha1:7088E/g8YdhIyvTCMrFx202oEik= User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.60 (gnu/linux) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:159353 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:54715 Archived-At: Xah writes: [The Emacs tutorial was] written in 1980's mindset [...] It is not [...] practicality oriented[.] Can you explain exactly what that means? I live in the 2000's and, though it's been a few years since I went through the tutorial, I don't recall reading anything that did not seem clearly focused on the specific and practical realities of how to use the Emacs editor. Or is your criticism really of Emacs itself? The emacs manual is a bit quaint in today, but it is very well written and complete. It is systematic, topics well organized, jargons are well defined and has several comprehensive index, the writing is clear, is well cross-linked.[...] The writing quality and content of emacs manual, is far better than most OpenSource docs such as perl, python, apache, unix man. What precisely do you mean by the term ``quaint?'' Given your own description, ``quaint'' does not seem the appropriate term. Terms like ``intelligent'' and ``professional'' leap to mind instead. I have found the Emacs documentation and its integration and availability or ``discoverability'' the best of any computer system, program or programming language I have ever dealt with. The wiki software used is Oddmuse [on EmacsWIki], which is a perl script of 4k lines, using flat files as database. As such, it is not comprehensive or powerful. I don't know much about wiki software. What kind of features are you missing specifically? You mentioned discussing this with Alex Schröder; what did he say about your suggestions? I also suggested that the writing guidlines should follow Wikipedia's style. Specifically, the content editing should be one with the goal of creating a comprehensive, coherent, article that gives readers info or tutorial about the subject. (as opposed to, maintaining the coherence of a dialogue and comments between wiki users) Guidelines such as those used by Wikipedia might have some positive effect on the content that is added to the wiki, however Wikipedia has the key to really making something like that work: an army of busybodies ready to enforce the guidelines. EmacsWiki (I suspect) does not have such resources. It is arguable that strict guidelines on EmacsWiki would have a dampening effect on the frequency of contributions, which I would guess is not the goal of its maintainers. In some contexts a slightly anarchic and disorganized something is better than a tightly organized nothing.