Re: guided tour suggestions

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

David House <dmhouse@gmail.com> writes:

> Perhaps we could have a little section in the tour showing off how
> customisable Emacs is. We could say:
>
>   If you want a more bare-bones Emacs, a good start might be to turn
>   off some of the more prominent GUI features.
>
>   [Screenshot showing Custom buffer with settings to turn off
>   scrollbar, menus and toolbar, in an Emacs without those features
>   activated.]

Personally, I find this irrelevant for a tour.  A single sentence "All
of the graphical and other features can be customized and also turned
off if desired" is sufficient.

If we really _must_ show anything in that respect, a customize buffer
is not really convincing.  Instead, the Options/Show/Hide menu would
be more appropriate.

>   Every single time a different colour or font is used, you can
>   customise which one to use:
>
>   [Screenshot showing an Emacs with a white-on-black colour scheme
>   and a non-default font.]

It is actually not much of a selling point: most people just assume
that they can configure stuff like that.

>   These are just the GUI customisations. Here's a selection of the
>   other things you can change:
>   
>   * Every single key binding in every single mode can be remapped, including
>     mouse sequences.
>   * You can redefine any function or command by writing Emacs Lisp.
>   [... a few more things here]
>
>   Because all of these options can be overwhelming, Emacs provides a powerful
>   configuration interface, M-x custom:
>
>   [Screenshot of the top Custom group.]
>
>   http://emacswiki.org also contains a veritable library of common and
>   not-so-common customisations.
>
> Or something of the sort. I think this is an important part of Emacs we should
> try to convey.

Maybe.  We should not overdo this aspect.  After all, one _can_ work
reasonably well with the default settings.  Customizing Emacs is
something for which the desire will only come with some time of usage.

-- 
David Kastrup