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

[C.Strobl]

hello all,

because i started the discussion i am feeling constrained to say some words to 
the discussion with the background of an emacs beginner.
first of all my motivation. the last years i worked with ultraedit and was 
quite content. then i changed my job and ultraedit wasn't  available any more. 
i didn't want to write a requst for buying software and so i searched with 
google for an advanced open source editor which was capable of editing columns.
i wasn't the first with that problem and nearly all answers i found in 
different discussion groups pointed to emacs. as an old friend of open source 
software i knew emacs and his history but i didn't dare until yet to use it 
becaues all people i know said its so complicated and time consuming to learn 
it.
next i went to the emacs homepage and downloaded the win32-binaries and 
installed it. Looking for help i was a little bit confused about the many links 
and  headlines below the point  Getting Help with GNU Emacs.
next i looked at the help menu. Glad to see the point tutorial i started to 
work through and after a few hours i was ready to start. but now i was faced 
with typical editing problems. for example i wanted to move a paragraph from 
one point in the document to the other. in ultraedit (or notepad or proton or 
...) a quite simple task: (text marking with the mouse C-x C-v). in emacs at 
the first look a little bit more complicated or at least unfamiliar to me. i 
didn't found such an example in the emacs manual  and it took quite a time to 
find one with google. next i wanted to delete all empty lines, search and 
replace strings and so on, typical edit tasks 
at least i bought the book learning ggnu emacs and after a while i read 
somewhere maybe in the book maybe in the internet that its better to open every 
file in the same frame. so i came to emacsW32. because i had a problem with the 
installation (my fault, look some emails before) i thought a way to solve it 
would be to edit the .emacs-file. again i looked in the manual but i didn't 
find something. i was still a beginner and i didn't know at all that the 
.emacs-file and elisp has the same basics.
but i stayed  stiff-necked and after a lot fo attempts i found a solution which 
worked but i wasn't really content. so i wrote to the list and lennard helped 
me out. but i wanted a list of all possible customization commands. the 
solution came from drew adams (M-x customize-apropos-options RET . RET). that 
was i looked for. and after the mails of eli i took a second closer look to the 
manual and now i am quite sure that nearly everything about emacs i can find 
there and i am sure with more experience i will use the manual more 
extensively. eli is also right that many internetsites are outdated and 
pointing in the wrong direction. BUT if you are a emacs-newbie, at least for 
me, the manual is very confusing maybe because its so powerfull, like emacs 
itself. at the first time all i had needed would be a simple document with 
normal tasks:

1) installation and configuration (for me especially with windows)
2) simple emacs-commandos like described in the tutorial in the emacs help menu
3) more extensivly examples for typical editing tasks like search and replace, 
copy and paste, rectangle editing, ...and so on. only with examples newbies can 
see the possibilities of emacs
4) a few word about the .emacs file and customization
5) a glossary with the special emacs terms
6) and all that in a separat pdf-document

again, i am sure everything i wrote above is integrated in the manual but a 
newbie has great problems to find it and i am sure many potential users give up 
after a few hours. the best would be this pdf-file could be downloaded with the 
emacs-file an a bundle or at least at the same site.

all i wrote above is my personal experience and opinion. but i wanted to write 
it to you all because you are investing so much time for such a great project 
like emacs and the only i can do now is to give you some feedback for your work 
with the background of a beginner. i have installed emacs since two weeks, i 
have invested a lot of time, much more time than i have ever invested for 
example to learn ultraedit, but i am confident that its an investment for the 
future and for me its also a lot of fun to to discover the possibilities of 
emacs. but i think it would easier to climb on the first emacs-hill with a 
short introduction-document than with the emacs bible what the manual in fact 
is.

thanks to all again for your help and greetings from munich
christian

p.s. maybe i write for myself such a document if a know more about emacs
 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden Im Auftrag von Eli Zaretskii
Gesendet: Freitag, 7. Juli 2006 11:10
An: Lennart Borgman
Cc: address@hidden
Betreff: Re: [h-e-w] EmacsW32, gnuserv, pathes in .emacs

> Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:40:12 +0200
> From: Lennart Borgman <address@hidden>
> CC:  address@hidden
> 
> > What, you mean your advice to use Explorer?  I just saved you from 
> > RMS's wrath, that's all ;-)
> >
> >   
> Firefox please ;-)

Wed all know what most Windows users have on their boxes as the default browser.