Re: Failing to see the allure of Emacs

[Uday S Reddy <uDOTsDOTreddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>]

akaiser@visi.com wrote:

> 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.

I think everybody jumped up and started objecting, not because they weren't open to criticism, but because what you have been saying is completely contrary to our own experience.  I personally think Emacs documentation is one of the best there is.  It is clear and concise, well-explained, and quite complete.  Ok, it takes some effort to read it.  But if you do read it -- linearly as I mentioned before -- you are well-rewarded.

By the way, I didn't say that you should read the "source code".  I said that people that contribute software often put their documentation at the top of their source code files as *comments*, instead of writing separate info documentation.  But, when such contributed software is accepted into Gnu Emacs, Gnu people often add the documentation in the info.  An example is the longlines package, which I started using several years ago.  I was glad to see that it got included in the Gnu Emacs release and equally glad to see that it got its own section in the info manual.  

Despite your claimed expertise with Emacs, I must say that your comments are quite off the mark.

Cheers,
Uday