Erik Iverson <address@hidden> writes:
Carsten Dominik wrote:
Dear all,
with the Org-mode manual moving toward 200 pages, I am
starting to worry that people with stop in their tracks
when considering Org-mode, just because of the sheer size
of the manual.
So I did a little experiment. I took the manual and stripped
everything which could be considered advanced material, but
keeping all features and all basic commands and customizations.
What remains are about 50 pages. A document with the same
structure (even the same chapter numbers) as the manual.
I am wondering if it would be useful to have this as a beginners
document - or if the existence of this document would lead
to more confusion than relief.
http://orgmode.org/orgguide.pdf
I don't see this a an alternative for the manual - just
as an additional, rather static document, with little need for
updates. The manual would continue to be the comprehensive
and constantly updated document.
Comments are welcome.
Hi Carsten,
I think this would be a good thing to have.
It would be good to have active HTML links to the relevant main
manual
sections in PDF and HTML versions. (even if this is not
encouraged by
texinfo format).
I'm tempted to suggest going even a little further than you have
done.
If you were to make it shorter, I would suggest removing the
following
sections, and to replace removed sections with very short non-
technical
advertisements for features that are covered in the main manual.
- 2.8 Drawers
- 3.2 Column width and alignment
- 3.3 The Spreadsheet (4 rather technical pages)
- 7.4 Property Inheritance and 7.5 Column View
(do beginners really need properties at all ??)
Dan
I think it's a great idea. The R project has something called "An
Introduction to R" for beginners, separate from the complete
manual.
I think that as a beginner, and wondering how to break into
learning a
new package, that "reading the manual" has certain negative
psychological connotations that "reading the intro document" does
not,
not the least of which is the length of full manual.
And since knowing just the basics of org can be immensely
beneficial,
I think it's even more reason to have a basic intro document.
--Erik
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