Dear Kaushal, The real treat is to read your nice message and to be a member of such a fantastic group of people!
Following your advice to stick to a stable release I searched for info on how to install it and I found instructions in http://orgmode.org/org.html#Installation telling me to run "M-x package-install RET org RET" from within emacs. I did it and it all looked like everything was running smoothly untill I was issued the messages: WARNING: No org-loaddefs.el file could be found from where org.el is loaded. You need to run "make" or "make autoloads" from Org lisp directory I am used to this since I first tried the cloned git version, but I noticed that there is no Makefile in the directory containing the newly dowloaded files (~/.emacs.d/elpa/org-20171113/), so I got stuck. I noticed that in the above installation instructions it is mentioned that: Important: you need to do this in a session where no .org file has been visited, i.e., where no Org built-in function have been loaded. Otherwise autoload Org functions will mess up the installation. so I repeated the process right after starting emacs with the --no-init-files option, then I added the line "(package-initialize)" to my initialization file but it still does not work, namely the old org-mode is loaded upon starting emacs. It is curious that I now have two org-mode entries in the top Emacs-Info node, one for the old version (7.9.3f) and another one for the new one (9.1.2 (release_9.1.2-37-g3f8d67)). Could I have premanently messed up my emacs installation by not following the above Important advice? Regards, Ruy Exel On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 12:50 AM, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.m...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello Ruy, > > First of all, thanks for confirming that this worked for you. > > Secondly, no question is a newbie question :) This mailing list is one of > the friendliest mailing lists I've participated in. So don't worry about > upsetting someone, or getting offended. So I am continuing this thread on > the mailing list. > > Feel free to ask any kind of Org question you might have, and there are > many folks here to help you out. > > Further comments are inline below. > > On Fri, Dec 8, 2017, 5:56 PM Ruy Exel <ruye...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> > #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE >> > ,#+STARTUP: align shrink >> > #+END_EXAMPLE >> >> Got it! Thanks very much. >> > > You're welcome. > > I am in fact a brand new user of org-mode and 7.9.3f is just the version >> which was dormant in my computer before I updated to the GIT version. >> Sometimes I use it for comparison. >> > > If you are a brand new user, it's my personal opinion that that stick to > the stable release. You get that by cloning the maint branch instead, or > getting org or org-plus-contrib via Org Elpa. > > The master branch isn't unstable, it's perfectly fine as a daily driver, > but some features could be in flux, which could get confusing if you just > started using Org. > > However I noticed that the online manual at (http://orgmode.org/manual/Col >> umn-width-and-alignment.html) is more compatible with that old version >> than the GIT version. >> > > The online version is synced with the stable releases of Org, which I > mentioned above. It's not in sync with the version you think (7.9.3f), but > with the latest stable release 9.1.4 (as of today). > > It just happens that the column shrink feature was recently (few months) > added to the Org master branch. So you don't see its reference in the > online manual. That feature will go out in the next major release of the > stable version.. 9.2. > > Of course I do not expect to have a fully working manual for a changing >> system such as the GIT version, >> > > You're in for a treat here :). This is Emacs, and in my experience the > best way to access the Info manuals. The Info manuals that get built along > with Org are always in sync with the respective versions. > > So, > > Org master > Manuals: Info (synced with Org master) > > Org maint > Manuals: Info, online (synced with Org maint) > > If you haven't used Info manuals, do C-h i h to learn how to use those > from within Emacs. They are vastly better searchable than the online > version. And you always access the correct version of the Org Info manual > from within Emacs. > > but in case the above manual is superseded by some other one, I'd like to >> know where it is. >> > > As above, if using master branch Org, you get the correct version of the > manual from within Emacs. > > PS: I figure this newbie message is not relevant to the folks at >> emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, so I'am not CCing it there anymore. >> > > As I said in the beginning of the email, don't worry. We are all here to > learn and share. > >> -- > > Kaushal Modi >
