Re: [OT] Reading Emacs Tutorials

[Byung-Hee HWANG <bh@izb.knu.ac.kr>]

Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> writes:

> On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:18:59 +0900, Byung-Hee HWANG <bh@izb.knu.ac.kr> wrote:
>> Because naturally i'm not patient, i cannot read the tutorials for
>> long time on anchor to chair. Is there somebody like me? If so, how do
>> you become to the power user on Emacs? Without reading Emacs tutorials
>> or Emacs howto.
>>
>> Nevetheless, i cannot give up Emacs study. Really i like Emacs for
>> now. Can you please help me about that? Without fall behind, i wish to
>> stand up line of power users after about 3 months. Please comments!
>
> I just took my own pace and rhythm.  Emacs is a huge program, so it is
> pretty normal to feel overwhelmed by its size and complexity.  I think
> it is safe to assume that nobody can learn _everything_ about Emacs in
> less than 3 months, but do not let this deter you from trying to use
> Emacs and learn more about it.
>
> You can start with small editing tasks, i.e. by setting Emacs as your
> editor for email messages.  I initially had my Emacs configured as the
> editor for mutt(1).  Starting a new Emacs instance for every email
> message seemed a bit slowish, but it also provided me with a safe-belt:
> when I did something stupid inside Emacs, I could save the message or
> kill the buffer, and restart the email editor.  This way I wouldn't feel
> afraid to try new things and commands.
>
> Using Emacs for editing my email messages was a pretty big step, because
> I usually post 10-50 new messages every day and I spend a fair amount of
> time inside my mail reader.  But `forcing' myself to use Emacs for this
> sort of work made me realize that I needed to learn more things about
> the editor, to become more effective in my email editing tasks.  So I
> did.
>
> Every time I learned of a new Emacs trick, I tried to apply it to my
> everyday email editing sessions.  I didn't read the _entire_ Emacs
> tutorial in one day.  I didn't read the entire manual in one day either.
> But I did read parts of the tutorial and the manual very often.  I spent
> small chunks of time, and let them accumulate over time to what must be
> now several hundred of hours of manual reading.
>
> The important thing to realize is that you don't have to read the
> *entire* manual in one go.  Learn how to look things up in the index of
> the manual, become acquainted with `info-mode' and how to navigate the
> manual by using keys you are familiar with, and let experience build up
> over time.
>
> HTH,
> Giorgos

Giorgos, i saw you at FreeBSD Project's mailing lists, nice to meet you!
Carefully i read your message from mail header (by t) to last
signature. Really you would be my role model as an Emacs user. Because i
like your posting style (bottom posting) and i like your posting route
(via newsgroup) and you are using BSD-like UNIX which is my favorite OS
currently. 

Your words give me some courage i can study Emacs over a boundary of
time continually. After read your message, i decided to start Emacs
study from handling Gnus itself. Thank you so much, indeed.
  
Sincerely,
  
-- 
Byung-Hee HWANG, KNU 
∑ WWW: http://izb.knu.ac.kr/~bh/