Re: What's a killed article ?

[harven]

Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> writes:

> On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:21:43 +0100, Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>> Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> writes:
>>> On Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:46:22 -0600, Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>>> new user when you are already an experienced developer.  On the other
>>> hand, if you *are* a newbie it costs nothing at all :-)
>>
>> Well, it costed me way too much time to get the basic usage of Gnus
>> I've.
>
> Hi Francis,
>
> The full quote was:
>
>     It takes a lot of empathy and practice to ``get into the
>     shoes'' of a new user when you are already an experienced
>     developer.  On the other hand, if you *are* a newbie it costs
>     nothing at all :-)
>
> I'm sorry if this wasn't very clear.  What I meant is that `newbies' are
> often the best person to ask about documentation improvements.  They do
> not need to spend any time or effort to get into the `newbie mindset',
> because they are already there.
>
> Experienced users tend to underestimate the effect of what they already
> know to the way they read documentation.
>
>> IMHO, a lots of people are likely to be discouraged when trying to use
>> gnus for the first time.
>
> That's true.  Now is the perfect time to help with Gnus documentation if
> you want.  You still have the memories of being a new user, they are
> still quite `fresh', and they stand a very good chance of being exactly
> the same questions that another new user will have in a week or a month!

>From the top of my head, some terms, either ambiguous or defined too
late in the manual

- MAIL BACK END (info "(gnus)Comparing mail back ends") The list of
  all available mail backends should be given sooner The following
  list appears in 1.5.3 (`nnml', `nnbabyl', `nnfolder',
  `nnmbox',`nnmh', and `nnmaildir') but nnimap is also mentioned in
  3.22 and others are alluded to at 6.3.13 It would be nice if real
  life config examples were given for each of them and if their
  different features and limitations were summarized somewhere.
  For example, I tried to use nnmbox to browse some archive and got the
  following: Article mail.misc:1190 out of order. This seems specific
  to that backend, and still mysterious for me.

- IDLE (info "(gnus)Daemons")
  what does exactly idle means ? Can really emacs be idle ? 
  Is emacs idle between that short time separating two keystrokes ? 
  Fetching mail freezes emacs, some warning and comments 
  would be welcome here.

- GNUS-SECONDARY-SELECT-METHODS
  and gnus-select-method. A single select method but many secondary
  methods ? Why  differentiate ? Is it correct to put a mail group
  as the primary method ? In the following
  (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.yourprovider.net"))
  "news.yourprovider.net" is the address used for news retrieval
  whereas dolk is not the address for retrieval in
  (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
        '((nnimap "dolk" (nnimap-address "localhost")
                         (nnimap-server-port 1430))))
  Or is it ? There are reports in this newsgroup of people
  getting in trouble if "dolk" is used instead of the nnimap address.
  I ran into that problem once.

There are a number of step-by-step introductory guides around and all
of them feel necessary to give a few definitions, which are not so well
explained in the Gnus manual. So, it should not be difficult to expand
the list. BTW I think it would be better to improve the GnusTutorial
on emacswiki instead of modifying the Gnus manual.