Re: [PROPOSAL] Quick and easy installation instructions

[Achim Gratz <Stromeko@nexgo.de>]

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.

> 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.
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