Re: Organized Learning

[Kevin Rodgers]

Jesper Harder wrote:

> googleartist@yahoo.com (Artist) writes:
> > I recently came upon a website called Stumbleupon.com where there is
> > a small toolbar to download and you get different website each time
> > you click the stumble icon matching to your interest and then you
> > rate the website etc..
> >
> > Question: How we can converge the theme of the application with
> > emacs to learn new emacs things
>
> This small code snippet (by Dave Pearson) that displays a "tip of the
> day":
>
> (defun totd ()
>   (interactive)
>   (with-output-to-temp-buffer "*Tip of the day*"
>     (let* ((commands (loop for s being the symbols
>                            when (commandp s) collect s))
>            (command (nth (random (length commands)) commands)))
>       (princ
>        (concat "Your tip for the day is:\n========================\n\n"
>                (describe-function command)
>                "\n\nInvoke with:\n\n"
>                (with-temp-buffer
>                  (where-is command t)
>                  (buffer-string)))))))

That could be extended to describe user options as well as commands:

(defun totd ()
  (interactive)
  (with-output-to-temp-buffer "*Tip of the day*"
    (let* ((symbols (loop for s being the symbols
                          when (or (commandp s) (user-variable-p s))
                          collect s))
           (symbol (nth (random (length symbols)) symbols)))
      (princ
       (concat "Your tip for the day is:\n========================\n\n"
               (cond ((commandp symbol)
                      (concat (describe-function symbol)
                              "\n\nInvoke with:\n\n"
                              (with-temp-buffer
                               (where-is symbol t)
                               (buffer-string))))
                     ((user-variable-p symbol)
                      (describe-variable symbol))))))))