From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Jean-Christophe Helary Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Specialized Emacs Features ? 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[133.232.153.210]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id b72sm45528635pfj.36.2017.06.02.17.49.14 for (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Fri, 02 Jun 2017 17:49:14 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.3273) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 2607:f8b0:400e:c00::233 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:215418 Archived-At: > On Jun 3, 2017, at 8:55, Cl=C3=A9ment Pit-Claudel = wrote: >=20 > On 2017-06-02 19:46, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote: >> I agree, and I'm not suggesting that we impose a learning method to = the reader. The manual is fully linked and referenced and as such is = already fully "spiralable". >=20 > That's not how I understood "in a spiral": I understood it as meaning = that the current manual can be read front to back, and that it proceeds = roughly in breadth-first order. Gathering related topic causes you to = learn a lot about a particular topic before you learn anything about the = next one. I understand that. And we can discuss theory of learning and reading = books for ever, which is not what I am trying to do. The reality of the manual is that nobody reads it front to back. People = start with a few online tutorials, start using Emacs, eventually go = through the Tutorial and then search for information on topics either on = the web or in the manuals installed on their machines. And even when = they know that the manual is here, they don't really try to read it = front to back in the end because there is no logical structure in it: = why would we consider "moving around words, paragraphs and pages" as = "advanced" when it is pretty much the core of the Tutorial ? The "Advanced Features" section maybe made sense when the printed manual = was really a thing (3 decades ago?), but then people started to abuse = it and it is now a place where things that are now considered "basic" = are mixed with things that are commonly used and things that are truly = advanced... It reminds me of the documentation for the "trim" argument in = split-string. The argument was added in 2013 and instead of putting its = documentation at the *end* of the documentation paragraph since it was = the last argument of the function, it was put *after* the long list or = examples. I moved it where it belonged the other day, but there are = plenty of things like this in the manual and in the reference that make = it hard to read and in the end hard to understand. Jean-Christophe=