Sorry, but I think the emacs documentation IS hard for a beginner like me.

   - At the very beginning, I didn't know where to search ! I was
   navigating through pages an pages, and the more I read, the more I had to
   read.
   - There is no "how to", whereas that's what people want nowadays. I
   don't want to spend time reading and understanding how emacs works, through
   pages of documentation (even if it is well written) ! I want to be told how
   to do what I want.
   - The online manual is ugly... HTML is cool, but a little bit of CSS
   would improve the manual a lot.


2012/6/24 rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com>

> On Jun 24, 7:39 am, ken <geb...@mousecar.com> wrote:
>
> > 5. Make the elisp documentation and tutorials so easy and fun to learn
> > that tons of people actually want to write code.
>
> When I first started reading the emacs/elisp docs around 93 I found
> them a model of clarity.
> Has that changed much? I dont think so
>
> Whats changed?  The fact that we are in 2012.
> In those days it was completely natural to expect that somebody who
> used a computer read a manual
> Today thats a strange requirement to say the least.
>
> Would a modern kid using a new phone/car expect to read a manual? The
> fact is they dont (whereas oldies like me struggle to find them :-) )
>
> And so you give them emacs along with a manual and they look at you
> funny.
>
> By chance they look inside and they find:
> - there's  a key called Meta? Whazzat?
> - C-p and C-n do up and down? Really?! (and whatever is C- ?)
> - And when you tell them arrow keys work just fine they are ready with
> a lock and key to put you away somewhere
>
> tl;dr version: Saying that emacs manuals are not fun and easy to learn
> is wrong.  Its just that reading them feels like 1980
>