Re: Possible change to startup.el

[Juri Linkov]

> there are five elements on the tutorial line:
>
>  TITLE -- "Emacs Tutorial" translated for the current language env
>  EN-TITLE -- English text "Emacs Tutorial"
>  EN-BLURB -- English text "Learn-by-doing tutorial ... efficiently."
>  tab -- a tab character (0x9)
>  LIST-OF-AVAILABLE-TUTORIALS -- list of locale suffixes
>
> the pre-patch presentation format is:
>
>  EN-TITLE tab EN-BLURB
>
> the patched presentation format is:
>
>  (if data-directory is not availble)
>  EN-TITLE tab EN-BLURB
>
>  (if filename resolved from consulting language env is "TUTORIAL")
>  EN-TITLE tab LIST-OF-AVAILABLE-TUTORIALS
>
>  (otherwise)
>  TITLE tab (EN-TITLE) LIST-OF-AVAILABLE-TUTORIALS
>
> what do you propose for the presentation format, based on these
> conditions and elements?

Since the splash screen displays menu items, I think that the last case
(labelled as `otherwise') should have two lines with menu items:

 Important Help menu items:
 EN-TITLE tab EN-BLURB
 EN-TITLE-LANG tab TITLE LIST-OF-AVAILABLE-TUTORIALS

where EN-TITLE-LANG is the menu item with English text
                       "Emacs Tutorial (choose language)..."

And for the case
`(if filename resolved from consulting language env is "TUTORIAL")':

 Important Help menu items:
 EN-TITLE tab EN-BLURB
 EN-TITLE-LANG tab LIST-OF-AVAILABLE-TUTORIALS

This raises another issue: I can't imagine how a non-English speaking
novice can start the tutorial?  Well, if we now add the English menu
item "Emacs Tutorial (choose language)..." to the splash screen then
she might find it under the Help menu and select it.  This creates the
buffer with a list of language completion.  But how she can select
a language when she knows nothing about Emacs!  With keyboard,
cursor keys don't work because she has to switch buffers with `C-x o'
to the completion buffer.  And even the left mouse button doesn't work
when slowly clicked on a language in the completion buffer with a delay
more than 350ms!

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/