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

[excalamus]

May 13, 2020, 06:53 by address@hidden:

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

The question is, is it worth spending a few paragraphs on those points:

> You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,

> self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.

When I wrote the first Emacs in 1976, these were exciting new advances.

Most users had never imagined such features in an editor.

Maybe today every programmer has seen such features elsewhere, and

responds to that statement with, "ho hum." If so, maybe we should

delete those paragraphs.

I do think most of that introduction comes off as somewhat uninspired

and mundane if you don't know that backstory, such as:

you can rebind the basic cursor motion commands (up, down, left and

right) to any keys on the keyboard that you find comfortable

While some parts are more exciting:

New commands are simply programs written in the Lisp language, which are

run by Emacs’s own Lisp interpreter. Existing commands can even be

redefined in the middle of an editing session, without having to restart

Emacs.

I think a rewrite would be in order. But it's hard to write such a text

well.

Best regards,

Stefan Kangas

How's this for a start?

+ Welcome to GNU Emacs!

+

+ An Emacs, short for "Editor MACroS", is a kind of text editor built

+ from the idea that each key calls a tiny program (or macro). This idea

+ proves powerful in practice, enabling far more than simple insertion

+ and deletion of characters.  With it, you can operate on words or

+ lines, sentences or paragraphs, even whole pages.  You can navigate

+ within or between documents, automate tasks, and control subprocesses;

+ all with the press of a key!  GNU Emacs is the GNU project's

+ incarnation of the Emacs idea.

+

+ GNU Emacs is built for introspection and extensibility.

+

+ "Introspection" means GNU Emacs has self-knowledge.  Every aspect of

+ the system is documented and, because of the Emacs idea, that

+ information is easy to access.  The documentation may be general, like

+ this introduction.  It may be instructive, like the tutorials that

+ are included.  The documentation even reaches down to the source code

+ itself!  All of this is right at your fingertips.  See Help.

+

+ "Extensibility" means behavior can be altered and improved.  Users can

+ customize their environment, from keyboard shortcuts to color themes

+ and most everything in-between.  See Customization.  The extensibility

+ goes beyond simple customization: new commands can be created and

+ applied in real-time.  New commands can be bundled in packages and

+ shared with the diverse Emacs community. Most of the commands in Emacs

+ are written in Lisp, with a few exceptions in C.  See Emacs Lisp

+ Intro(eintr) if you want to learn Emacs Lisp programming.

+

+ GNU Emacs is used by authors and researchers, as well as programmers.

+ It has seen active development for more than 30 years; it is a

+ heritage as much as a community project.  We love GNU Emacs because we

+ feel that no other editing environment rewards sustained user

+ investment quite like it.  We hope that will be your experience, too.

A few thoughts:

- The introduction in Emacs 26.3 is 306 words.  This is also 306 words.  I propose any rewrite should also be ~306 words.

- Extensible is more specific than customizable; if you're extensible, you're necessarily customizable, right?

- As brought up in the "GNU Emacs Raison d'etre" thread, it appears "We love GNU Emacs because we feel that no other editing environment rewards sustained user investment quite like it."  I buried this in the last paragraph because it flowed.  It's an audacious claim; one I think GNU Emacs upholds and a standard I think the community may implicitly support.  If so, it might be helpful to make it explicit.  Maybe that sentiment should be front and center?

- Aside from memory, these were my sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000819071104/http://www.multicians.org:80/mepap.html#seciii

https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~monnier/hopl-4-emacs-lisp.pdf

- Real-time editor is used differently here than it appears to have meant in 1976.  I have used it here as shorthand for "without having to restart Emacs".