[implementations-list] How important is a Vimpulse user manual? How to make one? Copy from Vim docs?

Sat Dec 26 12:12:34 CET 2009

On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:55:36AM +0000, Vegard Øye wrote:
> Vim is a programmer's editor, in the true sense of that term. This is
> most apparent when looking up the documentation. The help files of a
> "popular" Windows editor like Notepad++ is full of friendly
> screenshots and easy-to-follow explanations of how you can perform a
> search and replace on your text in just six simple steps, but makes no
> mention at all of remapping the internals or tweaking cryptic
> variables. Vim's documentation has no pictures, but its level of
> detail is staggering, as seen when issuing ":help <BS>":
> 
>         [count] characters to the left.  |exclusive| motion.
>         Note: If you prefer <BS> to delete a character, use
>         the mapping:
>                 :map CTRL-V<BS>         X
>         (to enter "CTRL-V<BS>" type the CTRL-V key, followed
>         by the <BS> key)
>         See |:fixdel| if the <BS> key does not do what you
>         want.
> 
> This is as no-nonsense as you can get. It is also overwhelmingly
> newbie-unfriendly. If you were to make a Vimpulse's User's Manual out
> of it, you wouldn't tell a Vim user anything they didn't know, nor a
> newbie anything they'd want to hear.

I strongly disagree -- IMO Vim documentation is very clear and useful
both for beginners and long-time users, not newbie-unfriendly in any
respect (if you really find the Reference Manual -- whence the above
quotation -- too "unfriendly", there is also the wordier and more
tutorial-like User Manual).
> 
> What is it a Vim user doesn't know, then? Emacs, and Emacs Lisp. How
> to (setq ...) variables rather than :set them, how to tweak whatever
> needs tweaking, how to combine the power of Vim with the power of
> Emacs. All of this should be shown by example. When you've never used
> Lisp before, it is okay to copy and modify an expression without
> understanding completely how it works.

For this, there are two Elisp manuals: The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
and A simple introduction to Emacs Lisp programming.