Re: [h-e-w] EmacsW32, gnuserv, pathes in .emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 12:56:51 +0100
> From: "Phil Betts" <address@hidden>
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 7:31 PM::
> 
> > I wish people would recommend the Emacs documentation _before_ wiki
> > and the other sites.
> 
> The OP said that he'd not yet found "good .emacs-files or tutorials".
> That implied that he'd already looked.

I don't see how this implies that he looked in the user manual.

> Perhaps I was wrong, but since the *first* place I'd look is in the
> program's bundled documentation, I assumed he had too.

I find that assumption is wrong in most cases.

> In any case, AFAIR the bundled tutorial only covers the fundamentals

I didn't mean the tutorial.  I meant the user manual and the built-in
documentation and help commands.

> and the documentation doesn't include "good .emacs-files"

Why not?  There's a section on the init files and what things go into
it.

> E.g. terminology is often confusing - emacs uses 
> "auto-fill" where the rest of the world uses "auto-wrap".

The manual has a Glossary section precisely for that need.  I think we
should make a point of telling newbies about its existence, to avoid
terminology problems.

> If you 
> apropos for "wrap", you'll find nothing remotely related to word-
> wrapping.  As in a lot of technical documentation, if you know where 
> to find the answer, you probably already know the answer.

My crystal ball says that you either don't know about the `i'
(Info-index) command, or rarely use it.  That command (and the
indexing in the manual) is specifically tuned to those who need to
find things quickly _without_ knowing what they are looking for.  I
think we should advertise that feature much more than we do, because
it's under-used.

> Is this EmacsW32 specific documentation, or part of the main emacs 
> manual?

The latter, of course.  I hate forked efforts; my only gripe about
Lennart's EmacsW32 effort is that it's ``off-Emacs'', not part of the
official package.