[h-e-w] Re: EmacsW32, gnuserv, pathes in .emacs

[Raymond Zeitler]

I just wanted to offer some positive feedback on the tutorial, which I
used six years ago to get acquainted with Emacs 20.7.  I had been a
long-time user of Brief on MS-DOS.  But it didn't work well under WinNT,
and the other editors I tried and actually paid for (Zeus and Vedit)
didn't meet all my needs.

The online documentation was very important.  Without it, I wouldn't
have known that Emacs was worth evaluating in the first place.  Then
after I installed Emacs, the tutorial got me using Emacs very quickly.
I took its advice and learned the native Emacs keybindings rather than
install the Windows emulation modes.  (I did try Crisp-mode briefly but
didn't like it.)  And I think that the tutorial introduced Info manual
reader.  But the new terminology (especially fill vs. wrap) confused me,
and I relied heavily on the WinNT FAQ.

Then I found, printed and read the entire Introduction to Emacs Lisp,
mostly while waiting for the effects of my weekly allergy shots to wear
off.

But the very best source of knowledge came from diligently reading the
gnu.emacs.help Usenet group (using Gnus, actually.)  The reason it was
so helpful was that it provided help for the things that new users
commonly have trouble with.  It served as a sort of "Tip of the Day"
feature.  One of the best of these was M-x apropos (as opposed to C-h
a).  (Actually, if you search gnu.emacs.gnus for "Tip of the Day," you
might find threads that I participated in.)

Sorry for the long post, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one
(to paraphrase Mark Twain).