Re: configurable means hard? [was: ... easier explanation how to setup gnus ...]

[Carson Chittom <carson@wistly.net>]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> But Gnus' defining feature is its configurability, and therefore
>> complexity: because it's so complex it's *hard* and you have to be
>> able to read the instructions, by and large, to do much that's useful.
>
> Hm.  I hear you, and though not very familiar with Gnus I can
> sympathize to some extent with this point of view.

For the record, I do believe that Gnus is "worse" (for lack of a better
term) than Emacs as a whole.  

> But I think that the goal should be something that (I think) Emacs
> achieves pretty well: it is configurable as hell, and it can be as
> complex as you like, but it ALSO lets uninformed users pick it up
> and start using it right away, out of the box.
>
> Others will disagree, but I think that, yes, you CAN pick up Emacs
> and just start using it, in particular if you make use of the menus.
> And (others will disagree, but) that is a good thing.

To a certain extent, I'd agree.  An "uninformed user" (to use your term)
can *definitely* use Emacs as a text editor with no prior experience,
particularly by using the menus (or if cua-mode is on).  But that same
uninformed user could equally well use something else, if that's the
only necessary task.

> Others will disagree, but I think that it is important that users
> be able to access something that can be complex at different levels,
> including virtually total ignorance.
>
> It is important to try (TRY, at least) to hide complexity and reveal
> it only as needed, on demand.  Users should not NEED to configure
> something and grok its innards before they can use it.  They should
> BE ABLE to configure it and learn progressively about its guts and
> advanced features.

Again, I don't disagree--in fact, I agree totally!

To maybe illustrate what I was getting at before, though, I conducted the
following thought experiment:

        I pretended that I have never used Emacs, but I know that in
        addition to editing text it can do many other things; and I am
        seated at a machine on which it is installed.  I am a reasonably
        intelligent person, who has some experience of computers on some
        platform or platforms.  What questions occur to me just as I
        browse through the menus?

        File
        - Why do I have five print options, and what's the difference?
        - Why when I click "New Window Below" do I not get a new window?
        
        Edit
        - What's a "face"?

        Tools 
        - Why do I read Net News with Gnus and send mail with Gnus
          but *read* mail with RMAIL?
        - Why doesn't encryption work?[1]

I don't mean to suggest these questions don't have answers--clearly they
do.  But these are things I thought of in the 30 seconds it took me to
conduct my thought experiment, and I only actually tried to do two
things: open a new window (i.e., what I "thought" was a window was a frame
and vice versa) and use the menu to encrypt a file.  I'm sure there are
more.  

If I try to start from a blank slate (via emacs -Q) and then select Gnus
(Gnus being what the original question was about in the old thread), I
get 
  
    nntp (news) open error: '>>>(error Unknown host "news")'. Continue?  

That has the virtue of telling me what's wrong, but gives me essentially
no information on how to fix it.

Complexity itself is not a problem, per se; but the presentation of that
complexity can be, and usually is.  I just think Emacs in general and
Gnus in particular needs some work in that regard.

But managing to understand that complexity is clearly not insurmountable
by somebody willing to put forth the effort: I'm posting this using
Gnus, and it's not like I'm some kind of uber-technical user.  Heck, I
work in HR.

Anyway, that's my $0.02.

[1] Incidentally, I appear to have discovered what might be a very minor
    bug in 24.3, as well; when you select a file to encrypt but gpg is
    not installed, you get a "permission denied" error, not a more
    accurate "file not found" error.