Hello,
First of all, orgmode rocks!
I am trying to work with with orgmode for a few months now, and I
feel like I am still only scratching the surface. I've read the manual,
and the online docs, yet fully functional access to some features eludes
me still.
I would find it tremendously useful if, perhaps as a part of the
documentation, there were several sample .org files, at various levels
of complexity (features used) _along_ _with_ a quick and simple screen
cast of its features being used in a real-life scenario. ( I find it
most useful for such screen casts to display key presses as they occur
... is there a "plugin" which would 1) show the keys being pressed and
2) also show the resulting functions being invoked by those keystrokes?
). Repeatedly I've spent more than an hour trying to figure out what
happened when I haven't noticed that by mistake that I've pressed some
weird key combo which has placed my orgmode/emacs session in an
incomprehensible state - e.g. narrowing a buffer. Had I known which keys
I had pressed by mistake, or at least the functions that they involved,
I could have looked up the manual to see how to "undo" such mess. But
when you don't know that your state is being called "narrowing buffer",
you have no clue what just happened and that you should find out how to
"widen" it again. ( That is very, VERY frustrating for an emacs/orgmode
newbie. Someone please advise how to turn on a log of keystrokes and
functions being invoked by those keystrokes. ... Consider having this on
as default for newbies. )
It seems to me that to get people started without unnecessary
frustrations, we might want to put into the docs something like:
To include feature : timestamp-based unique IDs : Configure emacs thusly
: <insert a patch here perhaps with a video/screencast showing manual
insertion> and then see how this works <a video here>; ... same for
features like HTML export, literal programming, custom timestamp
(perhaps with down-to-seconds resolution) custom, etc
I believe if I saw in a few screen casts how the orgmode
"professionals" use orgmode, and had access to their sample orgmode
files which I could follow along and literally identically modify during
the screencast, I would be much father (and perhaps even happier) with
the use of orgmode. I think the most crucial point for newbies is being
able to literally follow the screencast along, perfectly replicating the
screen cast results in their emacs / evil / spacemacs setup.
If people would want to send me URLs for their sample .org files for
which they also have a demo screen cast on how to use their features, I
would like to pull these together and create a section for the docs with
these.
Guys! You are a wonderful bunch and you are perfecting an amazing
software! ... Let the world get more of a taste of your amazing work.
Thanks so much for orgmode!
John