andyo@westford.ccur.com (Andy Oram) (02/28/91)
RMS's Emacs manual is deservedly a classic of computer documentation. It
supports incremental learning, so that a very novice user (one who has just
been through the on-line tutorial, say) can learn just what he or she feels is
necessary about each topic, and then move on to another topic. There is a
beautiful, smooth flow from high-level topics and models to low-level,
nitty-gritty facts. And the book stands as proof that you don't need a
reference manual to cover a product completely (it completely documents the
user interface to Emacs, above the Lisp programming level).
I haven't tried raw searching for functions in the hard-copy manual, which
hollen@megatek.UUCP (Dion Hollenbeck) complained about -- perhaps that is a
weakness, but a superficial one.
I often cite this manual in workshops as a model for other computer
documentation. Anyone who wants the theory behind my reasoning, please
contact me -- I've got some articles I'll send you.
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This message is not an official statement from Concurrent, but my own opinion.
Read George's lips -- this war will be a short one.
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