Re: Some developement questions

[hw]

address@hidden (Phillip Lord) writes:

> 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.

How would you not depend on it?

What confuses me is that C is so easy to confuse with c or C, etc.  I'd
find 'Control-x ret f' or 'ESC-w' much easier to read.

>> 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.

What does that do?

>> 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.

Such tutorials should be shipped with Emacs when they are available.