On Tuesday, October 22, 2013 3:23:59 AM UTC-5, Edward K. Ream wrote: > I am starting to get inklings about what we all have missed for so long: Leo's core benefits. The fundamental Aha: we *must not* confuse benefits with features!!
In the "This, and *only* this" thread I have just stated why vim's notion of speed and power does not come close to Leo's. Here, I'll discuss several topics related to benefits vs. features. The goal is to create words that newbies can understand and find compelling. 1. For me, features instantly blur into benefits. It is a *fact* that Leo scripts are 10 to 100 times easier to write than the equivalent (and nonexistent!) emacs or vimoutliner scripts. Is this fact a feature or a benefit, or neither? It seems to be an a gray area. It's a fact about scripts, and scripts are "merely" features. But these scripts make programming easier, which is a benefit! 2. In my last reply to Steve, I said (minus the emphasis): QQQ Leo scripts will be orders of magnitude than org mode or VimOutliner scripts (and 10-100 times easier to write), because Leo scripts work on true Python objects, created by Leo's read code, whereas org mode and VimOutliner work on text. Leo's read code produces highly-refined (20+ years in the making) Python objects (the position and vnode classes) by reading highly-refined (yes, 20+ years in the making) sentinels. QQQ Leo's preface, http://leoeditor.com/preliminaries.html#preface, says: "Features such as @test nodes and @button nodes can not even be *thought* in any other editor. Leo implements such features easily; other editors could only simulate them–laboriously and unnaturally." I think this kind of discussion might be useful on a page called something like "Leo vs vim and Emacs". Imo, Leo must have such a page. Newbies must know why vim and Emacs do not make Leo redundant. Furthermore, I think that programmers can handle technical hints about why Leo scripts are so powerful. 3. In the "This, and *only* this" thread Steve also said, "95% of the population will never believe they need an outliner or that an outliner would do them any good, or that outlining is a skill they need to bother to acquire." I agree with Steve. Happily, outlining is a feature, not a benefit. We simply must not try to sell features. The conclusion: sell Leo as an IDE that makes programming (and other tasks!) substantially easier than IDE's such as vim and emacs. 4. Someone (I thought it was Steve but I can't find the quote now) said something like "Leo started out primarily for programmers". Yes, Leo started out that way, and programming will always be my first love. But something very interesting happened on our travels. Leo's scripting and plugin capabilities, being *far* in advance of those Emacs or vim, encouraged many people, including myself, to create features aimed at writers and people who wanted to use Leo as a PIM. So now we have the quasi-wysiwyg rst3 command, which instantly shows rST output in the viewrendered pane, and we have Terry's todo.py and bookmarks.py plugins to support Leo as a PIM, and we even have Ville's valuespace.py and IPython support for Leo as a spreadsheet and Leo as a scientific notebook. In short, Leo's programming advantages have turned directly into features (and corresponding benefits!) for *non*-programmers. Summary - This post hasn't discussed actual words. I'm not sure how much they matter, provided they hammer away at Leo's core benefits, namely that Leo makes programming almost unbelievably easier. As a result, Leo has become a superb tool for non-programming tasks as well. - Newbies must know that we are aware of org mode and vimoutline mode, and that we think they are feeble imitations of Leo outlines. Giving the technical reasons why Leo rules might be compelling for techies. - Perhaps the best (only?) way to convey how *much* easier Leo makes life for programmers and non-programmers is to sprinkle testimonials throughout Leo's tutorial. I'm seriously considering it. All of these summary points are debatable. Your comments and corrections please Amigos. 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.
