The following is intended to motivate people to take the trouble to read Leo's tutorial, which btw I intend to revise substantially. The first words are always the most important, and imo some encouragement is necessary. All comments and suggestions are welcome:
================================== Leo users often speak of an "Aha" moment in which they understand what Leo is all about. In this section I'll tell you the essential features of this Aha so you'll know what to look for. 1. Everything in Leo is related to organized outlines. All data in Leo has essential structure. All of Leo's commands understand that structure, and everything you do in Leo involves outline structure. For example, you can apply Leo's search commands to the entire outline, or just parts of the outline. As we shall see, Leo outlines can generate many external files, and in this case, Leo's straightforward search commands effectively work like grep. 2. You can organize your data in as many ways as you like. Leo's outlines are not strict hierarchies (trees) but DAG's (Directive Acyclic Graphs). This allows any node (part) of an outline to appear many times within the same outline. Any node can be cloned, which creates a "live" copy of that node. Any changes to a node or its descendants affects all clones, because in fact all clones are exactly the same node. As we shall see, you can use clones to create multiple views of an outline that reside in the outline itself. You never have to pick one "correct" or "real" organization of a Leo outline--you can organize the data in a Leo outline in as many ways as you want. 3. Leo has a memory. Leo remembers all the ways you want to organize your data. It reappears every time you reopen a Leo file. Furthermore, parts of Leo outlines can represent external files. You seldom have to open files manually: Leo loads the files whenever you open the Leo outline that contains them. 4. Scripts have easy access to Leo outlines. Leo uses Python as its primary scripting language. Your Python scripts can easily get or change any part of the outline in which they reside. Accessing Leo outlines is easy even for non-technical users. Editors like Emacs and Vim give you access only to files and characters of text in those files; Leo gives you your own nodes to work with, organized as you want. In technical terms, Leo has a DOM (Document Object Model). For programmers, Leo's rich DOM opens up endless possibilities. 5. Leo can create scripts and computer programs from outlines. Leo's outlines can organize collections of scripts and programs, much like a filing cabinet. But Leo can use outline structure **to create** your scripts and programs. This is hugely useful when organizing complex scripts and programs. For example, all of Leo's source code is generated from outlines. This is a partial list of what makes Leo truly different from other programs. I hope it will help create your own Aha moment. The effect of these features is that you can do things in Leo that you can not even think about in other programs. You'll know you have gotten it when you start telling people how much fun Leo is to use. Edward --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
