Hi,
Now that we're discussing about redoing the documentation in a more
direct and pedagogic way, I would like to share my experience while
using recently emacs. This could be helpful, but I understand that the
one actually making the documentation is Edward, and we're trying to
help from the "distance".
Over a couple of decades, since I'm using Free/Libre Open Source
Software, I have used Emacs barely. I think that the total amount of
time in all that time is near to a couple of hours top. Each time I have
used just for a few minutes.
Recently I need to create a table in plain text and I new that Org-Mode
has a easy and intuitive way to do it, but I *didn't* want to learn
emacs to use Org-Mode. So I went to the Org-Mode screencasts web page
and saw the first 10 minutos or so of 2011 - Org Demo by Bastien [1]. I
particularly liked the idea of "not learning curve" and the idea of not
needing to learn Emacs to learn Org-Mode (that was my case). Then I saw
and introductory video "Taking Notes In Emacs Org-Mode" [2] which
provided example about outlining, taking notes, GTD and at the end, how
to reach org-mode documentation. Then I open the documentation, went to
tables, read a little while seeing the "panoramic" video on tables in
Org Mode at [3]. After that, and a couple of minutes, I was able to make
tables in Org-Mode plain text markup and this changed my way of doing
plain text tables forever.
[1] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-screencasts/ghm2011-demo.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZ09dAbLEE
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTJVLJd_gz0
So, what I learned from that:
- I was motivated for a particular task (I didn't want to learn Emacs
to learn Org, or even learn all Org).
- I started from a panoramic view to see where my task and approach
fit the tool/community.
- From that overview and familiarization with the basics (basic
outlining and its shorcuts) I went deeper into my particular task, using
multimodal info (video and text) about the same taks: making tables.
- I accomplished my task in a very fluid way and change the way I
will made it, from now on.
That seemed more like reading a map and finding where I was and then
finding my way to my intended destination that to reading the manual.
That "path" is now with me, next time I need to reach similar places.
As I said, I'm now writing the documentation for Grafoscopio and is more
like a traditional manual (despite of providing external links and
panoramic information), with particular general tasks (installation,
outlining, switching to interactive nodes) and an invitation to go to
particular notebooks for specific/deeper stuff. Still far away of what
Org-Mode provides, particularly for its active community with several
contributors and authors, but maybe this "map instead of manual" can be
a proper ethos for interactive documentation.
Cheers,
Offray
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