Re: How to make Emacs popular again.

[João Távora]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 5:42 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>   > I didn't even distinguish correctly between Emacs and Emacs Lisp
>   > manuals,
>
> Can you suggest a way to clarify that?

Not really.  Tip-the-day in the welcome screen?  A clippy, type thing?
So many ideas sophisticated ideas here, but I guess at a certain point
we just want the following sentence to be presented in front of the eyes
of impatient, not particularly methodical, programmers like I was back
then:

"Hey, did you know Emacs has manuals?  They're really good!
There's THIS manual that teaches how to use Emacs, its
keys and stuff, and there THIS manual which teaches how
to program for Emacs, so you can make your own extensions."

People starting off with Emacs are not married to it like we
mostly are.  They want it to stay out of their way so they can
go about their task.  There should be a way to slowly call
attention to the superior qualities of the editor, even if the
strategy is to textually say: "take our word for it, spend 10
minutes doing this fun tutorial".  And then deliver, of course,
if the tutorial is utterly boring or useless that user is probably
lost forever.

João