Re: Failing to see the allure of Emacs

["akaiser@visi.com" <akaiser@visi.com>]

Dear friends, no one is immune from criticism, but I've noted with 
amusement how the discussion is wandering astray with misreading and 
misunderstanding.  Did I say "that emacs lacked documentation"?  No.  Has 
"no one suggested that you read the source code"?  Someone did.  Are the 
important manuals all up to date?  Obviously not.  Is the documentation 
complete?  Clearly, no.  Is there lots of useful stuff there?  Sure.  Is it 
readily usable?  For some people, for some purposes.

But if determined, competent, insightful people sat down to design 
documentation that would be complete, most usable, and most helpful over a 
range of users, the current emacs documentation isn't what they'd come up 
with.  Far from it.  Ask any talented documentation professional.

Maybe you're motivated to track down what I've done in free software, and 
what documentation I've created.  But I can't do it all.  I appreciate the 
work other determined people put in on emacs (and other free software) and 
documentation, but it's not immune to criticism and suggestion.  Otherwise 
how will we improve things?

We're colleagues here, and we're all in the same bus.  Let's not browbeat 
one another, and let's not deceive ourselves.

emacs is The One True Editor.  It's a work of genius, and I've written 
about why that is.  But I wish it had better documentation.

djc