I think that the documentation concerning installation should be made
more user-friendly. My impression is that the Org manual makes all
this
sound much harder than it needs to be, and I suspect that this is an
entry-barrier for new Org users. For example, the first thing users
encounter in the manual section is an instruction to edit a Makefile.
I suggest we provide a "quick and easy installation" section to the
manual, that shows people how to start using the latest version of
Org-mode without messing about with compilation and installation (I
rarely compile and have never "installed" Org-mode). It would also be
helpful to include notes on how to find your ".emacs" file.
This would involve the following changes to section 1.2 Installation:
1. The first thing it should say would be along the lines of
"A reasonably recent version of Org is included in Emacs. Are you
sure you need the latest version of Org? If not, skip to the
Activation section and start using Org!"
2. Then we should lay out an easy route and a full route:
1. Quick and easy
Download, set your load-path and (require 'org-install)
Optionally compile (within emacs[1]?)
Suggested text below.
2. Full install
Based on existing instructions
What do people think? Is it just the info files which are the issue?
What does a single-user machine gain from installation other than info
files?
Dan
Footnotes:
[1] How about including in Org-mode a function `org-compile' based on
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-hacks.php#compiling-org-without-make
and `org-reload'
Example quick and Easy installation text:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Download the latest version
.zip and .tar.gz version are kept at
http://orgmode.org/org-latest.zip
http://orgmode.org/org-latest.tar.gz
2. Extract the archived files
This will create a folder called "org-mode". Let's say that the
location of this folder is "~/path/to/org-mode" (for Windows see
footnote [1])
3. Add the following lines to your .emacs file (note that we're
pointing
to the "lisp" folder *within* the main "org-mode" folder):
(setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/org-mode/lisp" load-path)
(require 'org-install)
That's it. However, this will not install the latest info files, so
these will be out of date (corresponding to whatever version of Org
shipped with your emacs). See XXXX for instructions on installing the
info files.
Now, Emacs should load whatever version of Org-mode you put at
"~/path/to/org-mode". So to update Org in the future, simply delete
that
folder and replace it with a new one (steps 1 and 2 above).
Footnotes:
[1] On Windows, this path might look something like
"C:\\path\to\org-mode"