Re: My emacs was upgraded and I am a novice again

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:12:43 +0100
> From: "Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>
> 
> The bottom line is that emacs has features that a large part of the user base
> appears to be unaware of. I'm thinking it may be possible to generate some
> form of documentation that might just put multiple pointers to a mode,
> a variable
> or some part of emacs that provides the feature that we only have an idea of
> in our head.

I don't think the problem is with generating the documentation.  Emacs
already has a huge body of documentation, both in the doc strings and
in the manuals that are part of the distribution.

I think the problem is _searching_ the available documentation.  So I
think what is needed is enhancing existing commands related to
documentation, or maybe adding one additional command, that would
efficiently search all the available sources of documentation.
Something like Google, just limited to the Emacs docs.  Such a search
command could then include a data base of synonyms to popular features
that people tend to look for.  (Right now, we are forced to mention
all the synonyms in the indexing directives that are part of the
manual.)

> My term for this would would most likely be 'auto-reload' or some
> such, i.e. when the file changes on disk, reload it.

If ``reload'' is something many people think of when they envision
such a feature, it should be easy enough to add that word to the
existing indexing of the manual and to the relevant doc strings.
However, I find this word surprising in this context.  What other
similar software packages use it?

> I'd find it hard to see how you'll collect other peoples understanding of
> the keywords.

By reading messages where people tell how they tried to search for
something in the docs.  And by applying personal knowledge, of course.

> That's why I suggested a wiki approach or webpage.

I'd instead urge people to tell here (or on emacs-devel) how they
search for things, when the search fails to find what they want.  A
wiki has a disadvantage that it requires the developers to look there
to become aware of users' needs.  That's why we encourage users to
report documentation bugs in such cases: the developers watch the
mailing lists where the bug reports get posted, and will react on them
soon enough.

> I find the emacs info pages a pain to navigate compared to searchable,
> indexable html pages derived from indexed xml. That's my bias I guess.

There should be no reason for you to navigate the Info manuals.  Try
using the `i' (Info-index) command instead, it should land you on the
right spot almost instantaneously.  And it supports completion.

> I was trying to be helpful Eli.

I never thought otherwise.  If my responses somehow sounded that I
didn't consider yours helpful, I apologize.

Thanks.