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> Now, stop, please. I know of Emacs manual, tutorial and all the other built-in docs. Stop telling me to use them, because I won't, thank you. Why not? If the

by jcrites 13y ago

> Now, stop, please. I know of Emacs manual, tutorial and all the other built-in docs. Stop telling me to use them, because I won't, thank you. Why not? If there are problems like they're hard to read, understand, you've tried them and they don't match your learning style, etc., then it would be better to say that instead. As written, this isn't very constructive since you don't explain why you find fault with the documentation. I would not know how to fix the problem in that documentation, if I wanted to, or point you to documentation that doesn't have the problem, since I don't know what the problem is. (Note: I'm not an Emacs expert and have no knowledge of the documentation you're referring to, or any other documentation. I'm responding primarily to your rhetoric.)

deleted 13y ago
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klibertp 13y ago
I'm sorry, I didn't think about it that way. It's not that the docs are bad, they are both very complete and approachable. However, it really doesn't suit my way of learning or using the editor. Unfortunately it's similar with available tutorials and other resources. While the docs are really impressive in terms of coverage, they are both structured in a way I don't like and use far too many words for descriptions of single thing. They are intended as a book, not as a cheat sheet, and I strongly prefer the latter. The docs assume no prior knowledge about anything related to editing text. That makes it discuss many boring and not that important things and the problem is that one has no way of knowing at a high level which chapter will be important and which won't. That's also true for tutorial, which makes a huge undertaking from learning to jump to the beginning of next word. That's ok for someone who used notepad earlier, but irritating for me. Whatever cheat sheet-like tutorials there are, they are incomplete instead. I would like to have a list of all possible commands and elisp functions in one flat document. There is probably no such document or at least I wasn't able to find it. And then there's an issue with some of the Emacs users, who are a bit more enthusiastic than they should. It's not hard to find answers that say that what someone wants is not the emacs way and that it should stop wanting it. A page or two down the thread there is code posted, no doubt, but that somewhat kills the pleasure of learning. In short: I prefer short references in the cheat sheet format for learning an editor. Instead of grouping by topic, such reference should group by importance. There is probably nothing like that in Emacs docs or other materials. I guess that interactive game or tutorial would be like that, because probably the most used shortcuts for the game would be the most important ones. And so I asked.

by jcrites 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

klibertp 13y ago

I'm sorry, I didn't think about it that way. It's not that the docs are bad, they are both very complete and approachable. However, it really doesn't suit my way of learning or using the editor. Unfortunately it's similar with available tutorials and other resources. While the docs are really impressive in terms of coverage, they are both structured in a way I don't like and use far too many words for descriptions of single thing. They are intended as a book, not as a cheat sheet, and I strongly prefer the latter. The docs assume no prior knowledge about anything related to editing text. That makes it discuss many boring and not that important things and the problem is that one has no way of knowing at a high level which chapter will be important and which won't. That's also true for tutorial, which makes a huge undertaking from learning to jump to the beginning of next word. That's ok for someone who used notepad earlier, but irritating for me. Whatever cheat sheet-like tutorials there are, they are incomplete instead. I would like to have a list of all possible commands and elisp functions in one flat document. There is probably no such document or at least I wasn't able to find it. And then there's an issue with some of the Emacs users, who are a bit more enthusiastic than they should. It's not hard to find answers that say that what someone wants is not the emacs way and that it should stop wanting it. A page or two down the thread there is code posted, no doubt, but that somewhat kills the pleasure of learning. In short: I prefer short references in the cheat sheet format for learning an editor. Instead of grouping by topic, such reference should group by importance. There is probably nothing like that in Emacs docs or other materials. I guess that interactive game or tutorial would be like that, because probably the most used shortcuts for the game would be the most important ones. And so I asked.