Bastien and others, When I worked in Hoofddorp in the early 90's, I travelled 2.5 hours by train every day. I reserved half of the train-time every single day for a year checking out GNU Emacs stuff I didn't understand on my notebook. This helped me a lot in going places (aka major modes, elisp code and, later, customizations) I didn't dare visiting before.
The same is true for most of the *Customization* stuff. Seeing things beyond your boundaries of understanding satisfies curiosity. Checking out stuff you don't completely understand is part of the Emacs journey. A journey which is a lot more exciting than any other virtual software inspired journey I've encountered. The creation of an `Expert mode' will make the exploration of new features `by accident' or by ambitious curiosity less likely. I think introducing an expert mode (is the plain and simple org-mode not already quite for experts already?) a bad thing. Then the semantics of `expert' come around. Expert in what field? Organisation? Elisp? Time-clocking? Org-mode key bindings? There must be over 5 different experts in using org-mode, which may be even overlapping. Personally I don't mind superfluous messages in GNU Emacs, if any. They disappear fast enough and don't appear to slow down things; though I might be wrong here of course. Last, but not least, org-mode users are honest people, at least to themselves they are, they must be! Many of them will have trouble admitting they're an expert in org-mode; they won't tick the box. They'll miss features they would otherwise try. Org-mode is the best invention since sliced bread and if not, GNU Emacs is, keep up the good work! many regards, Joost Helberg >>>>> "Bastien" == Bastien <b...@altern.org> writes: > Subject: [O] Org expert mode? > From: Bastien <b...@altern.org> > To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org > Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:05:32 +0100 > Hi all, > Org tries to stay as simple/accessible as possible for newbie and as > complete/flexible as possible for power users. > The documentation and the UI are central for this: the documentation > should promote core features, document complex ones, and give pointers > on how to hack Org -- it does that already IMO; the UI should give > access to core features and give hints on complex ones, so that the > user can learn more. > I've just added the ability to run a custom function for bulk agenda > actions (thanks to Puneeth for the patch!) This is clearly for power > users -- or those who are willing to take the time to find functions > that we might document in Worg. > So I naturally thought of something like an "Org Expert mode": when > turned off, the UI would *not* give access to complex features and > perhaps display more helpful messages on simple ones; when turned on, > Org would have a less verbose UI (think of the C-c C-e window, do we > really want to *read* it all the times?) and give access to all the > complex features. > This is really just a call for ideas/comments -- I wonder if people > already came accross such an idea and and what they think. > I'm myself not convinced: it's a good thing that Org doesn't need an > Expert mode so far, it means newbies are not confused by the UI, and > experts are not frustrated by it either. But I expect neat features > can emerge from the discussion. > Thanks for your thoughts! > -- > Bastien -- Snow B.V. http://snow.nl
