Re: (emacs) Intro [was: Making Emacs popular again with a video]

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 28 May 2020 03:21:34 +0200 (CEST)
> Cc: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>, Emacs Devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> From: excalamus--- via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> First, I think it oversells the accessibility of the documentation.
> The Emacs documentation is extensive and well written.  However, I
> find it quite difficult to navigate to a concept if that thing isn't a
> function or variable.  I have been a beginner and asked myself, "What
> is a cons cell?".  I found then, as I often still do, that leaving
> Emacs (to use a web browser) yields results fast enough to not use
> Emacs itself.  Ironically, I most often wind up at the gnu.org html
> documentation.

Are you aware of the 'i' command in Info, and using it?  Because its
purpose is precisely to help in the situations like you describe.  For
example, "what is a cons cell?" is immediately answered by typing this
in Info:

  i cons cell RET

or even

  i cons RET

Maybe we should have an interactive command that would let users type
the likes of "what is a cons cell" and translate that to the
appropriate Info-index command?  Because this extremely useful command
seems to be unknown and under-used.

> I consider being a component of the GNU system a feature and
> something integral to distinguishing GNU Emacs from other Emacsen.

I think at this time and place, there's only one Emacs.  What
"non-GNU" Emacsen are there that still need to be kept in mind?