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Re: What would an "An Official" GNU Emacs Book look like?


From: Filipp Gunbin
Subject: Re: What would an "An Official" GNU Emacs Book look like?
Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 19:53:18 +0300
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (darwin)

On 17/05/2015 21:24 +0530, Vaidheeswaran C wrote:

>> In principle, we could do such a thing -- but what would this
>> book be _about_?
>
>> The FSF already has three books about Emacs.  If you propose
>> we make another, what subject matter do you propose?
>
> I don't have concrete answers to your questions.
>
> Without seeking to define the content of the book (for now), let us
> just __name__ my effort "A Emacs Primer".

You could start with something less ambitious and improve manuals of
different complex packages by adding more "Quick start" information
addressed to people who are new to the package.

Otherwise you should be prepared to deal with versioning - you don't
have the ability to attach the working sample code to the specific
version in version control system.  That's why I don't like books on
software which are too specific - there's always something that has
changed since the time of writing.

I remember that when starting to use some of the complex packages I
inevitably had to read half of the manual before getting something to
work...

A good example of this is the GNU Bash manual.  When I'm (re-)reading
it, I always have a feeling that I read C code translated into English.
Very precise and exact information, but not a good starting point.

Filipp



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