Re: org-mode tutorial questionaire

[Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com>]

Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca> writes:

> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:
>>
>>> Hi Alex,
>>>
>>> Alexander Poslavsky <alexander.poslavsky@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> There is a new tutorial on worg: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/
>>>> org4beginners.php. The idea is to write a tutorial for somebody who is
>>>> new to org-mode.
>>> ...
>>>> For everybody:
>>>> -What kind of tutorial would be the most useful? 
>>>> -What in your experience people find confusing?
>>>
>>> Thanks for taking the time to put this on Worg. I wish I had had such a
>>> concise summary of the various flavors of emacs on different platforms
>>> when I started exploring org-mode.
>>>
>>> I was wondering if you could elaborate on the following. Are you
>>> suggesting that new users should never use M-x customize?
>>
>> As a general comment on this : I used to hand code all my
>> customisations. And ran into terrible problems somewhere along the
>> line. Now anything that has a customise interface, I use that interface
>> and have had no such problems anymore. The downside of course is that
>> your customisations are not grouped "logically" with comments -but, for
>> me anyway, using the customisation interface lends itself to much more
>> trustworthy code.
>
> I also use customize extensively -- wherever it is available.  I don't
> have to worry about the exact syntax of the value of the variable - I
> can just use the customize interface and pick what I want and move on to
> more productive things.
>
> I used to hand code variables as Richard did but found I wasted a heck
> of a lot more time fiddling with the syntax of a variable doing that
> instead of just setting it and forgetting it with the customize
> interface.  The customize interface that Carsten has put together also
> makes it easy to see all of the options for a variable in org-mode.
>
> Some variables need to be set before org-mode is loaded (when using
> setq) but as I understand it this isn't the case for customizations.
>
> Regards,
> Bernt
>
> PS.
>
> I keep my ~/.emacs -> ~/git/emacs/emacs.el and ~/git/emacs/custom.el
> files in a git repository (~/git/emacs) so I can commit changes to these
> files and add meaningful comments about the reason for the change in the
> commit message.  This lets me easily experiment with changing half a
> dozen variables and not worrying about remembering the old values in
> case I want to go back.  Git has the information and it's easy to
> restore the old values for any point in the git history.  This also lets
> me synchronize variable changes to my laptop so my on-the-road org-mode
> setup is identical to my workstation.
>

As a side note to this is for those not familiar with git, its pretty
simple to manage a remote git repo using ssh. When on the road or
dealing with multiple PCs around the "globe" (!) this can be priceless.

I maintain my own "sparse" repo on my mail server machine. Whenever I
update my ~/.emacs.d/emacs-init.org file or my custom.el in the same dir
I push it to the remote shh repo too. Handy as to then sync my laptop or
the machine at work.

Needless to say, all my org-files are in there too.

The only thing that still taxes my pickled brain is when I need to
merge. The git terminology for fast forwards etc confuses me each  and
every time ;)

-- 
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