Re: Some developement questions

[Phillip Lord]

hw <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden (Phillip Lord) writes:
>
>> Personally, I would like to ditch all the "how to move around" with
>> keys stuff -- this scares most people to hell, because they think that
>> they need to learn this to do something that they already know how to
>> do these things.
>
> right
>
> The current tutorial is more suited to drive people away than anything
> else.
>
> Who knows what a META or an EDIT key is?  And who cares?  Even after
> almost 30 years of getting used to them, I'm finding notations like 'C-x
> ret f' or 'M-w' very confusing.  How does that belong into a tutorial?


I think we need to introduce this notation, because people will see it
everywhere; but we should not depend on it.


> People might use C-v to copy something rather than to scroll.  They will
> use the cursor keys and PgUp and PgDown to move around.

There is a separate question here about making Emacs better
out-of-the-box. One of the things that might improve things is to turn
CUA mode on by default for instance.



> Your tutorial even explains what Emacs is and gives some history.  That
> is a much more welcoming start.

Thank you!

>> In terms of advanced issues, my thought was to enable tutorial
>> extensions to go into ELPA and then have a navigational structure.
>
> Maybe several tutorials would be better, like one covering what Emacs is
> (nowadays that may be a good idea), one covering the first steps and
> others covering the installation of packages after users have aquired
> some understanding of what packages are.


There is also the practical reality that the Emacs update cycle is
relatively slow. A tutorial on ELPA could be updated out of that cycle.

Phil