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Re: Info tutorial is out of date


From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Info tutorial is out of date
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 02:25:33 -0400

    I don't even see why `C-l' is mentioned anymore, especially at the very
    beginning of the tutorial. It was important back when 14K baud was a fast
    transmission speed and your screen got "garbaged" (to quote the tutorial)
    from time to time. You needed to learn `C-l' at the beginning, because if
    your screen got garbled then you were lost in the tutorial - that was a game
    in itself (much more interesting than invisible text). `C-l' is just a
    vestige of the bad-ole-days - lose it.

I agree.

    With absolutely no instruction, a user will figure out immediately how to
    move among nodes - the equivalent of `n', `p', `u', and `m', because they
    *see* the corresponding links and buttons. Clicking links and buttons is a
    fine way to get around, to get the info you need - at least in the
    beginning. Teaching `n' and `p' does not need to take up the first several
    minutes of the tutorial - it should be presented much later, perhaps in a
    (brief) lesson on keyboard shortcuts.

That seems plausible to try.

    The first thing the tutorial should do is take a tour of the menu-bar menu -
    that is, those menu items that are the most important. This is also the
    opportunity to point out the key bindings indicated in the menu. That is the
    way to introduce the shortcuts `i', `s', and `l', for instance - in passing.

The menu bar is no more convenient or clear than keys.

    BTW, the help text (tooltip) for the search toolbar icon should not scare
    people away by mentioning regular expressions. It should say simply `Search
    the manual'. If you don't think that's enough, then it could say `Search the
    manual (regexp is OK)'.

That is ok.

    None of the tooltips should use the word "file" -
    they should say "manual".

It would ok.

    I'll say one more time, in passing, that an icon for deletion (X) should not
    be used for quitting Info - that is a bad idea. Several other possibilities
    were suggested previously (e.g. the international icon for an exit: arrow
    exiting a room), and there are lots of quit icons to choose from. But that
    particular X is often used for deletion, a confusion we don't want here.

I agree.

    The Info tutorial itself should be accessible (listed) in the menu of the
    first node of the Info manual. Instead, it is only mentioned in the text of
    that node, in terms of `h'.

I don't see the reason for this.  Once a person is looking at the Info
manual, he doesn't need the tutorial any more.  And he can still get to
it in the usual way.

    Before entering the tutorial, we should tell
    users how to exit it, to get back where they were.

I don't quite follow.

     BTW, `h' should not bring
    up the tutorial, it should display a mini-version of what `C-h m' shows: a
    short list of the main key bindings - about the same as what's in the
    menu-bar menu, but with some explanation. There is no need to have a key
    binding just to bring up the Info tutorial - people won't be doing that 30
    times a day.

I see your point, but at the same time, people using Info may not grasp
the idea of two-character commands.

    The node `Invisible text in Emacs Info' is incomprehensible to me
    ("invisible text is really a part of the text"!?). Yow! Why are we telling
    users about killing and yanking Info text? (I guess printing is OK.) Why is
    this near the beginning of the tutorial? I really, really do not get this.

I agree -- why teach people about this in the tutorial?
Does anyone think this is desirable?

    In general, instead of introducing so many key bindings (e.g. `]'), the
    tutorial should spend the user's time taking a tour of Info *functionality*.
    Touring the menu-bar menu is a good way to explore the main functionalities:
    show what's there and what it does. In addition to the features in the
    menu-bar menu, teach SPC and DEL - that's about it.

Other commands such as ] are also functionality.  They are a little
more advanced, as functionality goes, so perhaps they should come later.




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