Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
On Mar 24, 2010, at 7:18 AM, Russell Adams wrote: Carsten, I discussed this with a few users off an on. In the manual there are items required to setup org, keybindings, etc. The idea would be to include: - An Agenda file, which loads by default - Init file which - Preconfigured keybindings - Remember keybinding for basic todo to agenda file - Configured auto-mode-alist - Recommended Global key maps They are all basic items to an experienced emacs user, but a new user doesn't understand why they have to go edit the config file and make changes. Their emphasis is on they want to run Org-mode, not Emacs with Org-mode. Perhaps an install script which sets the file association for .org in whatever OS they are installing to. Option icon to load straight to agenda view... Just a few idea that have been bantered around, I suspect all of those could be performed with a script as opposed to redistributing emacs. Thanks. On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 11:52:41AM +0100, Carsten Dominik wrote: Hi Russel, this is also a valuable idea. There are two avenues in this direction. 1. Make the org-mode defaults already set all this stuff up. 2. Offer a blind set of configurations and tell users, if you don' know nothing yet, use these. In either case, what would the improved defaults be that help beginners get a better start? - Carsten On Mar 23, 2010, at 11:07 PM, Russell Adams wrote: The idea of a tutorial is great, but has anyone considered a pre-configured out-of-the-box Org customized Emacs distribution? I've had to help several new users get things like basic agenda, emacs initialization, and remember templates setup and it seemed very repetitive. The Emacs learning curve really holds back Org adoption in that sense, they can't just open Emacs and use Org immediately as anything other than an outline editor. Perhaps just a script to enact default customizations, that the tutorial could then build upon? Thanks. On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 07:59:11PM +0100, Alexander Poslavsky wrote: Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode -- Russell Adamsrlad...@adamsinfoserv.com PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode - Carsten ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode -- Russell Adamsrlad...@adamsinfoserv.com PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode Aloha all, A possible contribution to this thread, org-check.org, is now available on Worg: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/examples/org-check.php This is a stub for a file that uses Org-babel to execute functions that query various configuration parameters and report back results in a table. Eric Schulte generously provided technical assistance. The table is organized by task, e.g. preview latex, with various configuration topics and their tests under each task. Here is an example of the anticipated use-case: the new user who wants to preview latex, but gets no results when following the manual instruction, can refresh the org-check table to see if the system has the necessary software, paths to the software on exec-path, and the value of the :scale property. Results are reported as pass/fail, or some other easy-to-interpret value. My ability to augment the file and to test it on different architectures is limited (as is Eric's ability to offer me technical assistance) and I'm hoping that others on the list will find the idea worthwhile and help out. The file org-check.org is available on github:
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
Hi Russel, this is also a valuable idea. There are two avenues in this direction. 1. Make the org-mode defaults already set all this stuff up. 2. Offer a blind set of configurations and tell users, if you don' know nothing yet, use these. In either case, what would the improved defaults be that help beginners get a better start? - Carsten On Mar 23, 2010, at 11:07 PM, Russell Adams wrote: The idea of a tutorial is great, but has anyone considered a pre-configured out-of-the-box Org customized Emacs distribution? I've had to help several new users get things like basic agenda, emacs initialization, and remember templates setup and it seemed very repetitive. The Emacs learning curve really holds back Org adoption in that sense, they can't just open Emacs and use Org immediately as anything other than an outline editor. Perhaps just a script to enact default customizations, that the tutorial could then build upon? Thanks. On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 07:59:11PM +0100, Alexander Poslavsky wrote: Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode -- Russell Adamsrlad...@adamsinfoserv.com PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode - Carsten ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
Russell Adams rlad...@adamsinfoserv.com writes: Carsten, I discussed this with a few users off an on. In the manual there are items required to setup org, keybindings, etc. The idea would be to include: - An Agenda file, which loads by default - Init file which - Preconfigured keybindings - Remember keybinding for basic todo to agenda file - Configured auto-mode-alist - Recommended Global key maps I think this sort of approach, perhaps as part of an org-mode emacs distribution, sounds like a very good idea. They are all basic items to an experienced emacs user, but a new user doesn't understand why they have to go edit the config file and make changes. Their emphasis is on they want to run Org-mode, not Emacs with Org-mode. Yes, exactly. I want to counter some of the recent pessimism on this topic. Org-mode is very attractive to people in its own right, and as it happens it is implemented in emacs. I know one person who has used org-mode constantly for a couple of years now, purely for the agenda and todo lists, without ever aquiring any ability or interest in using emacs per se. She knows the keys to change TODO states, set timestamps and call up the agenda and that was all that was needed. Although only scraping the surface of what org-mode can do, the fact that someone who otherwise only uses MS Word and firefox is still using org-mode after two years says something *extremely* positive about org-mode. So I don't think it is true that org-mode is hard to learn, *once* it is configured. And I don't think it's true that org-mode users have to know anything about emacs. Certainly I don't think org-mode newbies should go anywhere near the emacs tutorial (I don't use any of those navigation commands, what on Earth's wrong with up, down, left, right, page down etc?[3]) That also brings up the question of org-CUA-compatible -- would that be set in this putative newbie org configuration? Regarding the idea of an org-specific emacs distribution, the Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) project is in a similar situation in that many of its new users come to it not having used emacs previously. On their download page[1], they link to an easy-to-set-up Emacs installation for Windows and OS X maintained by Vincent Goulet[2] which is kept up-to-date with the current version of ESS. So what I am saying is that org-mode is sufficiently attractive that we should expect non-emacs users to be attracted to it, and that we should be optimistic about the ability of such people to start using org-mode. And that yes, we need to work on the configuration for them. Dan Footnotes: [1] http://ess.r-project.org/index.php?Section=download [2] http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/ressources/emacs/ [3] Maybe it makes more sense if you can touch type, something which is common among college-educated people in the USA but not in the UK. Perhaps an install script which sets the file association for .org in whatever OS they are installing to. Option icon to load straight to agenda view... Just a few idea that have been bantered around, I suspect all of those could be performed with a script as opposed to redistributing emacs. Thanks. On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 11:52:41AM +0100, Carsten Dominik wrote: Hi Russel, this is also a valuable idea. There are two avenues in this direction. 1. Make the org-mode defaults already set all this stuff up. 2. Offer a blind set of configurations and tell users, if you don' know nothing yet, use these. In either case, what would the improved defaults be that help beginners get a better start? - Carsten On Mar 23, 2010, at 11:07 PM, Russell Adams wrote: The idea of a tutorial is great, but has anyone considered a pre-configured out-of-the-box Org customized Emacs distribution? I've had to help several new users get things like basic agenda, emacs initialization, and remember templates setup and it seemed very repetitive. The Emacs learning curve really holds back Org adoption in that sense, they can't just open Emacs and use Org immediately as anything other than an outline editor. Perhaps just a script to enact default customizations, that the tutorial could then build upon? Thanks. On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 07:59:11PM +0100, Alexander Poslavsky wrote: Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode -- Russell
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
Dear Dan, dear Russell, dear Carsten, On 24.03.2010, at 20:07, Dan Davison wrote: Russell Adams rlad...@adamsinfoserv.com writes: I discussed this with a few users off an on. In the manual there are items required to setup org, keybindings, etc. The idea would be to include: - An Agenda file, which loads by default - Init file which - Preconfigured keybindings - Remember keybinding for basic todo to agenda file - Configured auto-mode-alist - Recommended Global key maps I think this sort of approach, perhaps as part of an org-mode emacs distribution, sounds like a very good idea. I agree and I had in mind distributions for Windows and for MacOS X. Windows is not my favourite platform, however, this is also true for many users who have no choice. I have already played a little with the official GNU distribution over the last weeks: if one adds a recent Org-mode version (upgrading Org-mode on Windows is a bit of a pain and an efficient way to lose potential new users...) and (optionally) a standard Windows installer (we like http://nsis.sourceforge.net for our own projects), a little more tweaking will get you a long way towards a real out-of-the-box Org-mode on Windows. There is also some work in progress on an Org-mode package for Aquamacs (MacOS X) here. The idea is that upgrading Aquamacs to the latest Org-mode release should be possible with a single click (or fairly few clicks anyway). Both projects would benefit from and depend on suggestions on how to implement Russell's list. Let me emphasize that we have no ambition to create new distributions from scratch: I am quite confident that the existing Windows GNU version and Aquamacs will only need comparatively minor changes. Once upon a time I would have found an approach involving distributions to upgrade only small portions of a large software package wasteful and inefficient. However, these days we have the bandwidth and, I feel, the advantages of potential new users outweigh the inelegance of this brute force method. Any comments are welcome. Warm regards, Stefan -- Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys. Head of IT group Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany Tel.: +49-221-4726-213 FAX +49-221-4726-298 Tel.: +49-221-478-5713 Mobile: 0160-93874279 Email: voll...@nf.mpg.de http://www.nf.mpg.de ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
The idea of a tutorial is great, but has anyone considered a pre-configured out-of-the-box Org customized Emacs distribution? I've had to help several new users get things like basic agenda, emacs initialization, and remember templates setup and it seemed very repetitive. The Emacs learning curve really holds back Org adoption in that sense, they can't just open Emacs and use Org immediately as anything other than an outline editor. Perhaps just a script to enact default customizations, that the tutorial could then build upon? Thanks. On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 07:59:11PM +0100, Alexander Poslavsky wrote: Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode -- Russell Adamsrlad...@adamsinfoserv.com PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
[Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex org4beginners.org Description: Binary data ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
On Tuesday 23 March 2010 06:59 am, Alexander Poslavsky wrote: Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex Timely, Alex. The learning curve is a little steep for some of us org-mode newbies. Have been through the FAQ but its the basics, and interaction with diary, and calendar, and a few other things. I'll take a look and maybe get back with thoughts. Thanks. ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
I'll also take a look and see what I think. Just been using org-mode and learning for about a week. Thanks for your efforts on this! While some have pointed out that org-mode may never be for a 'beginner', I still think allowing others to have the best chance possible to evaluate it and at least give it a shot is great. John On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Adam ah...@ihug.co.nz wrote: On Tuesday 23 March 2010 06:59 am, Alexander Poslavsky wrote: Hello, lately there is some talk about a basic org-mode tutorial. Something simpler then the documentation, that will help a person new to emacs and org-mode start using org. I would like to put the following on worg, if people would think something like this would fit the bill. What do you think? If the response is positive then I would add more chapters to it. greetings, alex Timely, Alex. The learning curve is a little steep for some of us org-mode newbies. Have been through the FAQ but its the basics, and interaction with diary, and calendar, and a few other things. I'll take a look and maybe get back with thoughts. Thanks. ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
Hi! On Mar 22, 2010, at 9:51 PM, John Hendy wrote: I'll also take a look and see what I think. Just been using org-mode and learning for about a week. Thanks for your efforts on this! While some have pointed out that org-mode may never be for a 'beginner', I still think allowing others to have the best chance possible to evaluate it and at least give it a shot is great. snip thanks! attached is an updated version of the file, added agenda and some lines on gtd and exporting. Thanks for reading, alex org4beginners.org Description: Binary data ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
Re: [Orgmode] Basic orgmode tutorial
Alexander Poslavsky alexander.poslav...@gmail.com writes: Hi! On Mar 22, 2010, at 9:51 PM, John Hendy wrote: I'll also take a look and see what I think. Just been using org-mode and learning for about a week. Thanks for your efforts on this! While some have pointed out that org-mode may never be for a 'beginner', I still think allowing others to have the best chance possible to evaluate it and at least give it a shot is great. snip thanks! attached is an updated version of the file, added agenda and some lines on gtd and exporting. Hi Alex, Please do put the tutorial on Worg (in the org-tutorials dir) for easy updating and editing. One change I was going to suggest is to - *C-x f* -- means holding both Control /and/ x, then release Control and press f as when I follow that literally I get xxxf :) Dan Thanks for reading, alex ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode ___ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
