Re: "Reference Dump" rant

[Lawrence Bottorff <borgauf@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4000 bytes --]

So yes, the complainer (that's me) shouldn't just complain, he should
become the improver. Yes, let me see what I can come up with.

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 3:52 PM, Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Lawrence,
>
> glad you like org-mode. I also think it is a great tool.
>
> One of the great things about org-mode is that it is used by a very wide
> range of people. I know of a couple of people who are not at all
> technical who use org-mode just for general organisation and writing. It
> certainly isn't something just for the 'Sheldons'.
>
> If you believe there are some areas of the org documentation which needs
> to be improved or augmented, I would strongly encourage you to
> contribute. One of the bigger challenges faced by community efforts like
> org-mode is documentation. Often, those who write and develop the
> solution are too close to it to write clear and comprehensive
> documentation. It needs contributions from users like yourself who don't
> have the low level knowledge which can blind you to higher level
> usability issues. As you will see from this list, documentation fixes
> and contributions are not uncommon and are certainly welcomed - in fact,
> that is one of the nice things about org-mode, the extent to which
> community contributions are accepted.
>
> regards,
>
> Tim
>
> Lawrence Bottorff <borgauf@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > As many might gather from seeing so many of my beginner posts, I'm not
> > exactly a Sheldon Cooper type, i.e., someone who has the A-ha! angel
> > standing by 24/7 with her hand on his shoulder. So today I thought I'd
> > upgrade my knowledge of org-mode tables. So I go to the section of the
> > "manual" on tables. Experimenting on the commands, I get this fairly
> > quickly:
> >
> > | p | q | p implies q |
> > |---+---+---------------|
> > | T | T | T                |
> > | T | F | F                |
> > | F | T | T                |
> > | F | F | T                |
> >
> > which looks perfect in my buffer, but not so good on an HTML export,
> i.e.,
> > the third column values seem too crowded to the left. Hence, how does one
> > justify that last column to be center? Googling, I kept being directed to
> > this
> > <http://orgmode.org/manual/Column-width-and-alignment.
> html#Column-width-and-alignment>
> > page,
> > which supposedly tells me how. Long story short, the A-ha! angel smiled,
> > and in the end I guessed that I'm supposed to do this:
> >
> > | p | q | p implies q |
> > |---+---+---------------|
> > | T | T | T                |
> > | T | F | F                |
> > | F | T | T                |
> > | F | F | T                |
> > |    |    |<c>              |
> >
> > which does in fact move the third column contents to the center -- on
> > export only. But that's not the norm for me, mainly because the
> explanation
> > has no example. Sure, it said, *To set the width of a column, one field
> > anywhere in the column may contain just the string ‘<N>’ where ‘N’ is an
> > integer specifying the width of the column in characters. *But it's
> really
> > not so obvious that you create an extra dummy row and stick <c> in it --
> at
> > least not to me.
> >
> > I know from math courses that a text passage can be terribly opaque --
> *until
> > you get it -- *then it seemed obvious. However, I can see any beginner
> with
> > org-mode getting frustrated often with the Manual. And of course I can
> site
> > many similar examples where only the Sheldon types would get it.
> >
> > I guess I'm saying it would be nice to have a big omnibus O'Reilly-style
> > tutorial on how to use org-mode. I've hung with org-mode because I think
> > it's great and, IMHO, should become a standard tool in all
> > STEM/STEM-education settings. Think of all those high schools (and even
> > colleges) forcing students to use "graphic calculators." What a waste!
> >
> > LB
>
>
> --
> Tim Cross
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5153 bytes --]