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From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
To: ding@gnus.org
Subject: Re: Proposed new introductory section to the Gnus manual
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2019 09:06:12 +0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87mug6klq3.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87blwmuh6j.fsf@dick.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>

dick.r.chiang@gmail.com writes:

> Disclaimer: I want to be brief, not abrasive (but the two are often conflated).

Thanks for the comments! And don't worry about tone.

> The monograph is half "Tao of Gnus", quarter "basic commands", and quarter
> "setup detail".  

Yup, that was the idea. Basically this would be the section users read
right before they hit M-x gnus for the first time.

> The "Tao" part can be much shorter. For instance:
>
>> Gnus treats mail and news uniformly as categorized message queues. One can
>> think of a mail folder or mailing list as isomorphic to a newsgroup.
>> Threads are identical in both realms. Traditionally, however, users prefer
>> keeping "TODO" mails at the top of their inbox, and here the mail-news
>> abstraction fails as Gnus *qua* newsreader does its best to hide what's
>> already been seen.

To me, this is the sort of thing that the Gnus manual already has plenty
of. If I were a new user, this would make very little sense to me, and
wouldn't be particularly helpful.

> Boom, onto the next chapter: "Basic Commands" should essentially be a `C-h m`
> dump of the Gnus keymap, with very little prose.
>
> Setup options (every sentence ending in "see XXX") need not be mentioned, as 
> they all get their own chapters.
>
> One attracts users by making things easy, not boring.  Your monograph contains
> a level of detail that's not appreciable until users actually start using Gnus.

The idea was exactly to mix some concept with some detailed keybindings,
so that the user could at least truck around the *Group* and *Summary*
buffers and feel like they knew where they were at.

A dump of "C-h m" sounds like the perfect way to drive away new users :)

Let's see what other people say!




  reply	other threads:[~2019-08-19  1:06 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 43+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-08-18 23:26 Eric Abrahamsen
2019-08-19  0:34 ` dick.r.chiang
2019-08-19  1:06   ` Eric Abrahamsen [this message]
2019-08-19  2:46     ` Bob Newell
2019-08-19  7:01       ` Eric S Fraga
2019-08-20  4:26         ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-08-20 11:37           ` dick
2019-09-09  8:13             ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-09 11:52               ` dick
2019-09-09 18:39                 ` Bob Newell
2019-09-09 19:48                   ` dick
2019-09-10  2:36                     ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-10 20:21                       ` dick
2019-09-10 23:50                         ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-12 19:19                           ` Michael
2019-09-13  9:19                             ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-13 15:08                               ` Eric S Fraga
2019-09-13 16:54                               ` Michael
2019-09-16  2:51                                 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-13 18:24                               ` Bob Newell
2019-09-13 18:39                                 ` Change input method or smtp server depending on addressee (was: Proposed new introductory section to the Gnus manual) Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2019-09-14 17:38                                   ` Change input method or smtp server depending on addressee Štěpán Němec
2019-09-16 18:26                                     ` Bob Newell
2019-09-16  8:52                                   ` Robert Pluim
2019-12-20 12:54                                   ` 황병희
2019-09-16  2:55                                 ` Proposed new introductory section to the Gnus manual Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-16 18:34                                   ` Bob Newell
2019-09-10 20:39                     ` Adam Sjøgren
2019-09-10 20:54                       ` dick
2019-09-12  5:31                       ` Steinar Bang
2019-09-07 19:50           ` Adam Sjøgren
2019-09-08 17:00             ` Bob Newell
2019-08-19 16:01       ` Adam Sjøgren
2019-08-19 18:04         ` Bob Newell
2019-08-19 18:09           ` Adam Sjøgren
2019-08-20  4:29         ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-09-07 19:44           ` Adam Sjøgren
2019-08-19 16:16       ` Eric S Fraga
2019-08-20  7:08       ` Bjørn Mork
2019-08-20  9:51         ` Eric S Fraga
2019-08-20 10:32           ` Bjørn Mork
2019-08-20 10:55             ` Eric S Fraga
2019-08-19 17:55 ` Adam Sjøgren

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