Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 08.05.20 um 10:26 schrieb Nathan Colinet:
> Hello,
>
> I read on the mailing list that you're looking for a way to make Emacs 
> popular again. I thought I could share my idea.
>
> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was 
> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install 
> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but 
> then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then 
> I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way 
> too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10 
> minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but 
> as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency. I 
> think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why 
> promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default Emacs.
>
> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.
>
> Stay safe and well,
>
> Nathan Colinet

Hi,

thanks bringing that up. Agree such a video might be helpful. The 
reasons however, why Emacs is a kind of niche nowadays are multiple and 
complex. Leaving apart all items Emacs itself can't change, there is 
something which can be done IMO: making Emacs ready for a beginner in 
programming resp. for non-programmers. Make Emacs appear mannerly as 
just an editor first. Which also means: at the beginning leave apart all 
complex stuff useful for advanced programmers only.

For instance at "Introduction" fairly everything in first paragraphs 
IMHO may be dropped resp. should be moved at later sections. Copy stuff 
below for the convenience of the reader here.

All the day enjoying Emacs,
Andreas

Copy:

Introduction
************

You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.  (The ‘G’ in
GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) is not silent.)

   We call Emacs “advanced” because it can do much more than simple
insertion and deletion of text.  It can control subprocesses, indent
programs automatically, show multiple files at once, edit remote files
like they were local files, and more.  Emacs editing commands operate in
terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, as
well as expressions and comments in various programming languages.

   “Self-documenting” means that at any time you can use special
commands, known as “help commands”, to find out what your options are,
or to find out what any command does, or to find all the commands that
pertain to a given topic.  *Note Help::.

   “Customizable” means that you can easily alter the behavior of Emacs
commands in simple ways.  For instance, if you use a programming
language in which comments start with ‘<**’ and end with ‘**>’, you can
tell the Emacs comment manipulation commands to use those strings (*note
Comments::).  To take another example, you can rebind the basic cursor
motion commands (up, down, left and right) to any keys on the keyboard
that you find comfortable.  *Note Customization::.