Re: Org Tutorials need more structure

[Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 4:44 AM, Eric Abrahamsen
<eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
> Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> today I looked at our tutorial page at
>>
>> http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/index.html
>>
>> and came away with the feeling that that this page has become
>> somewhat useless for people who are really new to Org.  I think
>> the page should start with a section of true recommendations
>> for beginners, a path we tell every new users to take in order to
>> learn about Org mode.
>>
>> Can we have a discussion here on how this path should look like?
>> When you came to Org-mode as a newby, what were the three resources
>> that really made an impression on by being accessible and
>> providing feel and promise for digging deeper?
>>
>> - Carsten
>
> My feeling is, the tutorial structure might look like this:
>
> Start with the basics: outlining and structure editing, plus
> introductions to links and properties.
>
> Then four other tutorials, presented in no particular order:
>
> 1. TODOs/agendas/task management (plus clocking)
> 2. Exporting
> 3. Babel
> 4. Tables/spreadsheets

I would only add that "exporting" is closely linked to "writing in
org" whcih is what I mostly do.  This includes topics like footnotes,
which I haven't really figured out yet after 3 years of using org
(admittedly I haven't really tried either).

It might also be nice if these tutorials included some sample setup
code to get intermediate-to-advanced features working even before one
fully understands them.

Very busy the net 2 weeks but afte that I'd like to try to give back a
little bit to the org community, so I could take a crack at some of
these areas (not 3 & 4 though!).

Matt

>
> Those four areas seem pretty distinct and independent to me (except
> there's special cross-over between exporting and babel blocks). Any
> given prospective org user will probably immediately gravitate to one or
> more areas, leaving the others for later. Personally, I immediately
> jumped into task management, then went to exporting, and I've only ever
> dabbled in babel and spreadsheets. I think it would be good to keep
> these areas fairly self-contained.
>
> 2 cents,
> Eric
>
>