From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Giorgos Keramidas Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: [OT] Reading Emacs Tutorials Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:32:24 +0200 Organization: SunSITE.dk - Supporting Open source Message-ID: <877i2qg5tj.fsf@kobe.laptop> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1237131651 24018 80.91.229.12 (15 Mar 2009 15:40:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:40:51 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Mar 15 16:42:06 2009 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 1LisTV-0000JH-3O for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:42:05 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:41072 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LisS6-00080m-Of for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:40:38 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!news.glorb.com!news2.glorb.com!dotsrc.org!filter.dotsrc.org!news.dotsrc.org!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.91 (berkeley-unix) Cancel-Lock: sha1:KOVJWYEFmz2WATcgLS1xpWo7jdY= Original-Lines: 47 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 79.103.47.13 Original-X-Trace: news.sunsite.dk DXC=jZO^`4@WJKbHZJdbckJL^Mjgb9LMWQ7e=5im\kkD69f^0kU2H0Ud6NT>o Original-X-Complaints-To: staff@sunsite.dk Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:167635 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:62932 Archived-At: On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:18:59 +0900, Byung-Hee HWANG wrote: > Because naturally i'm not patient, i cannot read the tutorials for > long time on anchor to chair. Is there somebody like me? If so, how do > you become to the power user on Emacs? Without reading Emacs tutorials > or Emacs howto. > > Nevetheless, i cannot give up Emacs study. Really i like Emacs for > now. Can you please help me about that? Without fall behind, i wish to > stand up line of power users after about 3 months. Please comments! I just took my own pace and rhythm. Emacs is a huge program, so it is pretty normal to feel overwhelmed by its size and complexity. I think it is safe to assume that nobody can learn _everything_ about Emacs in less than 3 months, but do not let this deter you from trying to use Emacs and learn more about it. You can start with small editing tasks, i.e. by setting Emacs as your editor for email messages. I initially had my Emacs configured as the editor for mutt(1). Starting a new Emacs instance for every email message seemed a bit slowish, but it also provided me with a safe-belt: when I did something stupid inside Emacs, I could save the message or kill the buffer, and restart the email editor. This way I wouldn't feel afraid to try new things and commands. Using Emacs for editing my email messages was a pretty big step, because I usually post 10-50 new messages every day and I spend a fair amount of time inside my mail reader. But `forcing' myself to use Emacs for this sort of work made me realize that I needed to learn more things about the editor, to become more effective in my email editing tasks. So I did. Every time I learned of a new Emacs trick, I tried to apply it to my everyday email editing sessions. I didn't read the _entire_ Emacs tutorial in one day. I didn't read the entire manual in one day either. But I did read parts of the tutorial and the manual very often. I spent small chunks of time, and let them accumulate over time to what must be now several hundred of hours of manual reading. The important thing to realize is that you don't have to read the *entire* manual in one go. Learn how to look things up in the index of the manual, become acquainted with `info-mode' and how to navigate the manual by using keys you are familiar with, and let experience build up over time. HTH, Giorgos