From: Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk>
To: Achim Gratz <Stromeko@nexgo.de>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Quick and easy installation instructions
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:22:25 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87r5ggs6u6.fsf@stats.ox.ac.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87hbhc5rtt.fsf@Rainer.invalid> (Achim Gratz's message of "Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:37:34 +0200")
Achim Gratz <Stromeko@nexgo.de> writes:
> Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> 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.
>
> Agreed. It was easy enough to follow for me, but I can see that others
> may find it too technical.
Hi Achim,
OK, so we're agreed. But your points below don't seem to describe a less
technical route. Could you describe the less technical version of the
instructions for the method that you are advocating?
Dan
>
>> 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.
>
> Just as a counter-point, I always compile and install (even bleeding
> edge, that just goes into a different place) because that allows me to
> separate production from experimental code more easily.
>
>> 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!"
>
> Don't assume what version of Emacs the user may have and it may be
> configured in crazy ways, too. To read the instructions one would
> already have had to find and go to orgmode.org, so there is little
> further effort to fix them up with the latest stable version. Right now
> there is no official Emacs release that uses Org 7.x, for instance.
>
>> 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.
>
> I'd really suggest putting it into site-lisp as that removes the need to
> muck about with load-path (which isn't customizable...), the dangers of
> which you demonstrate yourself:
>
>> (setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/org-mode/lisp" load-path)
>
> (yes, just a missing closing paren). The other thing of course is that
> by putting it there all other users on the system will benefit from it.
> That's a plus even under Windows.
>
> While we are at it, I think both org and org-babel have enough files to
> better go into sub-directories (maybe org-install should stay on
> top-level).
>
>
> Achim.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-09-26 18:22 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 29+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-09-26 13:33 [PROPOSAL] Quick and easy installation instructions Dan Davison
2010-09-26 13:44 ` Thomas S. Dye
2010-09-26 13:52 ` A. Ryan Reynolds
2010-09-26 14:21 ` Richard Riley
2010-09-26 14:52 ` Dan Davison
2010-09-26 15:01 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-09-26 15:02 ` Richard Riley
2010-09-26 21:00 ` Rémi Vanicat
2010-09-27 6:23 ` Richard Riley
2010-09-26 20:51 ` Adam
2010-09-26 14:51 ` John Hendy
2010-09-26 17:37 ` Achim Gratz
2010-09-26 18:22 ` Dan Davison [this message]
2010-09-26 19:27 ` Achim Gratz
2010-09-26 20:57 ` ELPA [WAS] " Dan Davison
2010-09-28 10:52 ` Scot Becker
2010-09-28 14:55 ` Jambunathan K
2010-09-28 17:48 ` ELPA Eric Schulte
2010-09-28 18:35 ` ELPA Sebastian Rose
2010-09-28 18:59 ` ELPA Achim Gratz
2010-09-28 19:09 ` ELPA Richard Riley
2010-09-28 20:43 ` ELPA Scot Becker
2010-09-27 6:26 ` [PROPOSAL] Quick and easy installation instructions Carsten Dominik
2010-09-27 9:00 ` Dan Davison
2010-09-27 9:55 ` Carsten Dominik
2010-09-27 10:50 ` Giovanni Ridolfi
2010-09-27 12:55 ` Sebastian Rose
2010-09-27 13:53 ` Dan Davison
2010-09-27 14:06 ` Sebastian Rose
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