Re: Emacs Newbie Info Pages

[Summer Emacs]

On Sep 13, 2024, at 12:46, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

From: Summer Emacs <summeremacs@summerstar.me>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2024 09:45:25 +0200
Cc: Corwin Brust <corwin@bru.st>,
emacs-devel@gnu.org

Yeah. I’ve been told. The problem with this is the following:

Premise: Everyone is different. Everyone has different needs.

Deduction: No tutorial will ever meet the needs of every single person.

Conclusion: Let’s not do anything.

Instead, let’s try this:

Premise: Most people who use Emacs are devs.
Given: Not everyone who uses Emacs is a dev.
Deduction: The people who aren’t devs may get lost in the assumptions made in Emacs welcome pages.
Conclusion: Let’s make a tutorial for people who aren’t devs.

I think mine sounds better and, maybe with a little luck and a touch of effort, we may get somewhere. =)

I think the "conclusion" you cite above, to do nothing, is not a
conclusion we arrived at.  (I also think it's a bit unfair to claim
that we arrived at such a "conclusion": it almost says we make silly
conclusions here.)  I think instead we acknowledged the problem and
tried to find solutions for it, like trying to identify the meaningful
classes/groups of users, so as to have a dedicated tutorial/mode for
each one of them.

I think a tutorial for people who are not software developers is an
okay solution, but that doesn't make the issue go away: non-developers
are still not a homogeneous group, and the challenge I mentions still
exists, albeit is perhaps smaller.

Understood!

Ok. I agree with you entirely though, but I think it would be a really simple affair to start something rather easy to understand for anyone.

Let me give you an example of what I think is a GOOD thing which teaches about Emacs: The Emacs Movement/Keys Tutorial. I think that’s a great tutorial. I understood it. It was easy to follow, and easy to use, and I learned it in no time. Whomever wrote that was great at that job. I want to emulate that for other stuff: Start from the point of view that the user doesn’t know the first thing about anything, and take them through some of the following:

1) What Emacs is and how they will learn it step by step.

2) Configuration

3) Themes (emphasise that they can make it look like they want to but here are a few examples of themes you can try out right now and where to get more and try those out)

4) Packages (We will want to list the major ones for writing/note taking. Org-Mode, EWS, Denote, Org-Roam, Fontaine because fonts are important to people, and Olivetti are some of the ones I’m thinking about.)

There will be more packages listed, and please read what I wrote in my rough draft to cover the fact that we are not favouring certain packages over others:

Emacs has so many packages available from so many people that they can't really all be counted. But rest assured: it numbers in the thousands. Since the assumption for those reading this tutorial is that they are not coders or developers, we are going to focus mostly on packages which will help you get up and running with your writing needs. Here are some suggested packages. There are many more which are not covered here and this is not necessarily an endorsement of one package over another. These are just helpful starting places for new users.

I know that this will be contentious, just like our choosing certain themes and some minimalist configs, but look: we have to start someplace. And we have to make editorial decisions.

What do you think? Also, if anyone else wants to collaborate on the document, I’m absolutely willing to do that and I’m even hoping for it. Please let me know how to go about sharing this with others who are interested in doing this. Do we set up a private email list? Do we collaborate on a git somewhere? I’m not sure how it all works and I’m willing to learn. But I do want to get this done sometime. =)

Before I forget: I include the link to the Emacs Movement/Keys tutorial at the top of my rough draft. People may miss it on the front page and I don’t want them to miss it. Yes, maybe it’s redundant, but if they’re going to click on a “New User? Click here!” thing, I will still want them to see it and do it. Again: I want to use what’s already built into Emacs, not change anything, and just give a landing place for newbies to learn about it.

Summer Emacs.