On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 3:25 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi > > I am a new user. (actually, I am still testing Leo), >
Welcome aboard. Newbies often have the clearest picture of Leo's failings. All of Leo's core developers take their opinions seriously. > and i could not help noticing that the use of Leo does not seem to be very > widespread. > Very few people talk about it and the user community seems to be quite > small. > It's hard to say. For example, a single download to a professor can, and has, represented dozens or hundreds of users. This reminds me: Leo should encourage users to send "postcards" to us so that we can have a better idea of who is actually using Leo. Randy Pausch's Alice project (Alice.org) used to do this. Not sure if it still does. > In terms of user adoption, it seems to me that Leo is nowhere near that of > other main text editors. > I think that's right. > Sure, Leo is in a category of its own, being an outlining editor, as > opposed to a simple editor, but should this not make it more popular, > instead of more obscure? > Not necessarily. People have a large investment in their existing tool chain. This makes us all reluctant to make big changes. > I really don't get it. > > From what I have seen, Leo has excellent capabilities. And yet it is still > a semi-obscure application. > > What are the reasons for this? Is it just a matter of not being publicized > enough, or is there something else? Or, let's say, what are the complaints > that people have against Leo? > Leo's core developers have asked these questions often. It's good to be reminded of them. It's true: I suck as a publicist ;-) But there substantive problems as well, especially for teams: 1. Leo naturally wants to insert sentinels into external files. This is the only *safe* way to retain outline structure. Many people, especially those wanting to dis Leo, object to the sentinels. True, there are alternatives to sentinels (using @auto and @shadow), but they aren't as powerful as @file. 2. Sharing .leo files themselves (rather than sharing the external files) is problematical. There are workarounds (so-called "ref" files). See the FAQ entry, How should I use Leo with bzr/git/hg/svn/cvs?, http://leoeditor.com/FAQ.html#id21. Finally, you should realize that it was never my goal to displace emacs or vim. My reasons for doing Leo were to create a tool that: 1. allows me to understand complex computer programs. 2. expands the power of scripting. Those are still my personal focus. Having said that, it's recently become apparent that documenting what Leo can *already* do has top priority. Here are the top three items on the list of desired outcomes for Leo: 1. Newbies can install Leo without problems. 2. Newbies can learn Leo's main features easily. 3. *Good* documentation exists for all important plugins and features. > > Please, help me to understand this puzzle. > HTH. Thanks for your interesting question. Edward -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
