[implementations-list] Ease of use of Emacs and Vimpulse (was: What should the Vimpulse quick-start guide talk about?)

Wed Feb 17 09:05:13 CET 2010

Vegard wrote, and Jason quoted:
> [...] ideally, I'd
> like Vimpulse to be useable without too much Emacs knowledge.

This is a good ideal.  Would anyone here volunteer to do some informal
usability testing?  Anyone can do it.  And it would help us achieve
the ideal that Vegard mentioned above.

== Usability testing idea ==

*  Find some Vim users at your local workplace, school, hacklab, or
LUG, or other place.
*  Tell them about Emacs, Vimpulse, and why they might like them.
*  Point them to the Emacs and Vimpulse homepages.
*  Tell them you'd like them to install and get started with Emacs and
Vimpulse with no help from you, so that you can watch and see what we
can do to make Vimpulse easier to install and get started with.
*  Sit back and *not talk at all* while they figure out Emacs and Vimpulse.

But it seems to me that the Emacs learning curve is very steep, so it
would take a lot of time for Emacs newbies to succeed even in just
installing Vimpulse into their Emacs add-ons directory.  Correct?

== More questions which are not strictly related to usability testing ==

How was your experience of learning Emacs?  How hard was it for you?
What helped?  People?  Certain books?  Certain videos?  Certain
websites?

Also, please tell us on behalf of the other people you know who've
used Emacs:  How was their experience of learning Emacs?