From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Vaidheeswaran C Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals Date: Sun, 17 May 2015 21:05:26 +0530 Message-ID: References: <87fv77barj.fsf@gnu.org> <87zj5fgpd8.fsf@newcastle.ac.uk> <83h9rnp0yy.fsf@gnu.org> <83zj5enihg.fsf@gnu.org> <554EFEFD.6090908@gmail.com> <833834o4rv.fsf@gnu.org> <834mnjm73d.fsf@gnu.org> <838ucpgepi.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1431833639 27081 80.91.229.3 (17 May 2015 03:33:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 17 May 2015 03:33:59 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun May 17 05:33:49 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1YtpKm-000173-GM for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 17 May 2015 05:33:48 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35881 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YtpKl-0005Kh-IO for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 16 May 2015 23:33:47 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:56331) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YtpKb-0005KQ-HH for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 16 May 2015 23:33:38 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YtpKW-0003ck-Hz for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 16 May 2015 23:33:37 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:36656) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YtpKW-0003ca-Am for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 16 May 2015 23:33:32 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1YtpKT-0000vL-Ha for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 17 May 2015 05:33:29 +0200 Original-Received: from 27.56.191.206 ([27.56.191.206]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 17 May 2015 05:33:29 +0200 Original-Received: from vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju by 27.56.191.206 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 17 May 2015 05:33:29 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 42 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 27.56.191.206 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Icedove/31.3.0 In-Reply-To: <838ucpgepi.fsf@gnu.org> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org X-Spam-Report: 5.9 points; * 3.3 DATE_IN_FUTURE_12_24 Date: is 12 to 24 hours after Received: date * 2.6 RCVD_NUMERIC_HELO Received: contains an IP address used for HELO Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:104472 Archived-At: On Saturday 16 May 2015 01:02 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > Again, I think we already do all that in the Emacs manuals, where > appropriate. - Emacs Manual :: I am arguing for FSF-blessed, Task-oriented "Emacs Primer". - 'Appropriate' :: The word "Approrpriate" is situational. Who decides what is appropriate? The maintainers, the users or the author of the manual. In so far as "Emacs Primer" is concerned, the Noobs become authorities. If they say something is "inappropriate" (from where they stand), then it will be deemed as such, without further disputation. > But please note the catch in this approach, if used indiscriminately: > the number of potential "Tasks" that an Emacs user can face is > virtually infinite. These tasks break into certain "building blocks", > which are combined in many different ways. If you always describe the > "tasks", then you will need to repeat the description of these > building blocks time and time again, which is a disadvantage. The question is: Whose "disadvantage" are you talking about? > IOW, the above methodology is suitable only to relatively simple tools > that support a small number of well-defined tasks. Emacs is not like > that, especially if you take ELisp into consideration, because that's > a reasonably general-purpose programming language, where the > task-based approach is unsuitable, IMO. In so far as "Emacs Primer" is concerned, Elisp will be out-of-scope. If "Appropriate" => ""Completeness", then what you say cannot be disputed. (See my earlier question on "Appropriateness"). "Emacs Manual" MAY be considered as a Curriculum but "Emacs Primer" WILL NOT BE A curriculum. The cookbooks and recipes are particularly popular and useful http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ElispCookbook. (This is true in spite of whether Emacs developers approve of such material or not.)