From: Matti De Craene <mattidecraene@gmail.com>
To: Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: emacs org-mode mailing list <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>,
Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: A shorter manual
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:43:56 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <m2le4f0b2511004281143z96f51e8mc9d4a3dae85e2225@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87aasn1pa4.fsf@stats.ox.ac.uk>
> - 2.8 Drawers
> - 3.2 Column width and alignment
> - 3.3 The Spreadsheet (4 rather technical pages)
> - 7.4 Property Inheritance and 7.5 Column View
> (do beginners really need properties at all ??)
I would agree on this list (except maybe drawers).
If there is room for additional sections maybe:
- include the org ref card as an appendix (which in itself offers a
very good overview of org)
- include some pointers into getting emacs for different OSes and
getting started with emacs. If there would be an O´Reilly book on
Org-mode this would be in the first chapter or so. For people who
started using emacs because of org (like me) the current Introduction
might still be too cryptic (?)
--
Matti
On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 7:05 PM, Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Erik Iverson <eriki@ccbr.umn.edu> writes:
>
>> Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> with the Org-mode manual moving toward 200 pages, I am
>>> starting to worry that people with stop in their tracks
>>> when considering Org-mode, just because of the sheer size
>>> of the manual.
>>>
>>> So I did a little experiment. I took the manual and stripped
>>> everything which could be considered advanced material, but
>>> keeping all features and all basic commands and customizations.
>>>
>>> What remains are about 50 pages. A document with the same
>>> structure (even the same chapter numbers) as the manual.
>>> I am wondering if it would be useful to have this as a beginners
>>> document - or if the existence of this document would lead
>>> to more confusion than relief.
>>>
>>> http://orgmode.org/orgguide.pdf
>>>
>>> I don't see this a an alternative for the manual - just
>>> as an additional, rather static document, with little need for
>>> updates. The manual would continue to be the comprehensive
>>> and constantly updated document.
>>>
>>> Comments are welcome.
>
> Hi Carsten,
>
> I think this would be a good thing to have.
>
> It would be good to have active HTML links to the relevant main manual
> sections in PDF and HTML versions. (even if this is not encouraged by
> texinfo format).
>
> I'm tempted to suggest going even a little further than you have done.
> If you were to make it shorter, I would suggest removing the following
> sections, and to replace removed sections with very short non-technical
> advertisements for features that are covered in the main manual.
>
> - 2.8 Drawers
> - 3.2 Column width and alignment
> - 3.3 The Spreadsheet (4 rather technical pages)
> - 7.4 Property Inheritance and 7.5 Column View
> (do beginners really need properties at all ??)
>
> Dan
>
>>
>> I think it's a great idea. The R project has something called "An
>> Introduction to R" for beginners, separate from the complete manual.
>> I think that as a beginner, and wondering how to break into learning a
>> new package, that "reading the manual" has certain negative
>> psychological connotations that "reading the intro document" does not,
>> not the least of which is the length of full manual.
>>
>> And since knowing just the basics of org can be immensely beneficial,
>> I think it's even more reason to have a basic intro document.
>>
>> --Erik
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
>> Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
>> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-04-28 18:46 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-04-28 15:46 A shorter manual Carsten Dominik
2010-04-28 15:57 ` Erik Iverson
2010-04-28 17:05 ` Dan Davison
2010-04-28 18:43 ` Matti De Craene [this message]
2010-04-28 21:52 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-04-29 17:23 ` Dan Davison
2010-04-29 21:27 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-04-29 22:14 ` Dan Davison
2010-04-29 22:36 ` Samuel Wales
2010-04-30 6:47 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-05-01 6:41 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-04-30 14:12 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-05-02 10:13 ` Matti De Craene
2010-04-28 17:06 ` Dan Davison
2010-04-28 16:00 ` Marco
2010-04-28 16:45 ` Thomas S. Dye
2010-04-28 17:24 ` Samuel Wales
2010-04-28 17:27 ` Samuel Wales
2010-04-28 18:59 ` Thomas S. Dye
2010-04-28 21:34 ` Sebastian Rose
2010-04-29 22:37 ` Samuel Wales
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=m2le4f0b2511004281143z96f51e8mc9d4a3dae85e2225@mail.gmail.com \
--to=mattidecraene@gmail.com \
--cc=carsten.dominik@gmail.com \
--cc=davison@stats.ox.ac.uk \
--cc=emacs-orgmode@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.