Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Rusi]

On Friday, May 15, 2015 at 7:14:52 PM UTC+5:30, Phil Lord wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii  writes:
> >> Its 2015.
> >> You dont need to explain things like cursor-movement [do people read/need
> >> notepad or gedit tutorials?] unless its rather non-standard.
> >
> > Emacs is neither notepad nor gedit, and we describe cursor motion
> > because the ergonomic commands for that are "rather non-standard", or
> > at least could be for people whose only experience is gedit or
> > notepad.
> >
> >> Of course in 1975 it was different...
> >
> > It's different today as it was different in 1985.  And we do mention
> > the arrow keys and PageUp/PageDown before we describe the
> > Emacs-specific bindings.  So I really see no reason to complain,
> > except if you have an agenda.
> 
> 
> I suspect that Rusi's agenda is to make the Emacs tutorial as easy to
> understand as possible.
> 
> I've rarely managed to get one of my students to read the tutorial. I
> would like to be able to change that situation. It's good to think of
> how.

Thanks Phil

Only change I'd make to your representation of my 'agenda' is that
I'd change 'easy' to 'useful'
This in line with Stefan's understanding that different audiences would
likely require different starting points.

eg For git there was a "Git for Computer Scientists"
Presumably a CSist is one who would understand (and feel pleased with 
understanding) graphs, dags etc
Putting aside the naivete of that view the point is that some people may like to
start looking at git 'as CSists' and others may not

Likewise emacs

"Emacs for typing tamil"
(to pick up an adjacent thread) is likely to read differently from 
"Emacs for C programmers"
from 
"Master GTD with emacs and org mode"
from
"Live online inside emacs! -- gnus, erc, sx"