On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi James. > > If you do not grok text its unlikely you will appreciate a text editor. > emacs is not just a text editor its an exceptionally powerful text editor > -- a power which is likely to alienate you even more. > So the best suggestion to someone who wishes to get into orgmode but finds > text (and text editors) unpleasant is to give up on orgmode, just dig into > emacs' simpler uses for a while and when a little more comfortable (with > emacs) try org again. Hopefully then your questions will be more focused to > this list and the answers will be more useful to you. > > That said, there is some merit in (some of) what you say. > org is so many different things at the same time that for a noob to find > one's way through the documentation to make his usecase work with minimum > pain seems to be unnecessarily hard. > > > The beginner's customization guide: > http://orgmode.org/worg/org-configs/org-customization-guide.html > is of course a starting point. > > But I wonder if it would be possible to structure it into something like > this outline so that different beginners could start at different places? > > * Brainstorming-n-outlining > TAB and the basic structure navigation and editing features > * Exporting and Publishing > *** html export > *** Odt export > *** Web publishing > *** Latex publishing > *** Presentations > ***** Lightweight options > http://orgmode.org/worg/org-configs/org-customization-guide.html > ***** Beamer > * Babel > *** For programming > *** For teaching programming > *** For doing science (R) > *** For scientific publishing (R+Latex) > * Time/project mgmt (GTD) > *** Agenda > *** Time tracking > *** capture-archive > *** Journalling > *** org-habit > * Tables and spreadsheets > * Integration with other emacs uses > *** gnus > *** bbdb/ org-contacts > *** firefox (org-protocol) > *** graphics (R, ditaa...) > > I would actually suggest to have a general introduction (what is org, what can it do, what are the principles of org) and then go into different usage scenarios and how to fulfill certain tasks. For example, I am using org-mode exclusively for literate programming and some document writing, but not for task management, calendar, email, etc. So at the beginning, I was really confused by the whole agenda and publishing stuff, until I realized, that I don't need it at all for what I am doing. And after looking at your suggested outline, it is going into that direction, but I would put e.g. "Exporting and Publishing" after the different usage scenarios. so: * Basic org ** what is it and what is it not ** what can it do ** principles and basics of org *** org capture * Usage scenarios ** Time Management *** calendar *** ... ** spreadsheets *** ... ** task manager ** literate programming *** general principles *** examples for different programming languages **** R **** sh **** ... I like the headings "org for doing ...", but one has to be careful, that they do not end uop in repeating to many things - so subheadings as links to the relevant sections above would be quite useful. Cheers, Rainer -- Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany) Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology Stellenbosch University South Africa Tel : +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44 Cell: +33 - (0)6 85 62 59 98 Fax (F): +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44 Fax (D): +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44 email: rai...@krugs.de Skype: RMkrug
