Re: understanding emacs packages

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

knubee <knubee@gmail.com> writes:

>> > what is a use scenario for this function?
>>
>> When you want to find Emacs packages by a keyword.  For example, all
>> packages related to multimedia are marked with the "multimedia"
>> keyword.
>
> Yes, but for those of you who actually use this function, when do you
> find it helpful?
>

For example, lets say I've been doing some programming and there are a
couple of things I'd like to modify in my working environment. In
particular, 

1. I'd like to be able to hide parts of a program source that I'm not
interested in
2. I'm working in a specific problem domain and there are lots of similar
constructs I need to code in most programs I write. I'd like to have some
sort of template system that would automate this
3. I'd like to have better integration between my editor and the version
control system we are using
4. I'd like my source files to be automatically updated with a last edited
time stamp when I save them
5. I'm wondering what other tools emacs may have which I could find
useful. 

I do C-h p and look through the list of categories. I spot one called
tools, which apparently consist of programming tools. That looks
promising. I enter that category and see a list of different tools. I'm not
familiar with all of them. While some are obvious from the name of the
source file, others are more cryptic. I hit enter on the ones which I'm not
sure about and get the summary from the commentary section. From this, I
can usually tell if I need to look at this package further or if I can just
ignore it and move on. 

I'm lucky - I find existing emacs support for all the things I was hoping
to find, plus I find out about something called imenu, which looks like it
could be very useful. I can now start using much of what I've found, spend
a bit of time learning about some of the others and maybe even schedule
some time to look at other potentially interesting items I noticed in the
listing. I now know there is no need for me to spend hours writing elisp to
make the editor do what I want - the wheel has already been invented and
all I need to do is learn how to use it!

Tim
-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au