Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Abhinav2000 1758 days ago
The documentation does _not_ suck. It it literally the most well documented software in existence, a reason for which it has been used for many different things outside its original purpose of text editing.

Yes, it may not be for everyone. But just say that, that it uses certain conventions that are likely outdated for a reasonable set of the population. But you can't say the documentation sucks when you have the below:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/in...

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/in...

2 comments

That documentation is thorough does not mean that it is good.

If anything, one might argue that Emacs documentation being so extensive while buing built around idiosyncratic conventions makes it worse, not better, for many cases: it means it is even harder for people to actually find relevant parts of the documentation.

Emacs itself is idiosyncractic. Being cute and using "standard" terminology would just confuse users.
This must be the funniest way to justify archaic terminology I've seen so far.
`You can also type Meta characters using two-character sequences starting with ESC. Thus, you can enter M-a by typing ESC a. You can enter C-M-a (holding down both Ctrl and Alt, then pressing a) by typing ESC C-a. Unlike Meta, ESC is entered as a separate character. You don’t hold down ESC while typing the next character; instead, press ESC and release it, then enter the next character. This feature is useful on certain text terminals where the Meta key does not function reliably.`

Taken from: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Us...

I'm really not sure that this counts as 'well documented'.

How would you phrase it? I find it to be quite clear.
Agreed. The paragraph above it explains that Meta is probably the alt key.

The terminology itself is kind of a relic from the past (it's gotta be Alt on 99.9% of emacs users' systems), but it's explained very clearly.