No book on Emacs

I’ve had a Skribit suggestion for my blog, with seven votes on it, that asks:

Can you write a Byte Of Emacs?

First of all, I’m flattered that 7 people out there like A Byte of Vim so much that they are asking about a similar book for Emacs.

Second, it just won’t happen. Almost never.

Why? Because:

• Writing a book is hard. It just sucks the life out of you. Really. Don’t believe me? Try writing one. Really.
• Writing a book means I have to be at least reasonably proficient on that topic or at least have good experience with it.
• I have used Emacs quite often in the past, especially for its SGML mode. But once I became proficient at Vim, I never went back.
• There’s no incentive for me to learn about Emacs in depth and then write a book on it. There’s no point in trying to master two different but great editors!

That being said, does anyone have a good resource list for Emacs for these 7 people?

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Posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 am.
Filed under categories: A Byte of Vim, Tech.
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12 Responses to “No book on Emacs”

1. karunakar Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am

   maybe you should name it has ‘The Byte series’ (like the Head First, or Dummies series).. and getting other authors who could write on other topics!

2. Jigish Gohil Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm

   I am one of the seven fan of that book

3. Swaroop Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm

   @Karunakar That’s a great idea, but where do I put out a call for such a person

   @Jigish Hehe, sorry to disappoint!

4. Jigish Gohil Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 4:28 pm

   I meant, one of the fans of vi book, don’t care for emacs

5. Swaroop Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 pm

   @Jigish Thanks!

6. The_Other_Swaroop() Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 1:54 am

   @Swaroop : U dont want to kill the golden goose do u ? Before you know it – it would be another set of “Dummies”

7. Swaroop Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 8:23 am

   @The_Other_Swaroop Huh? Even the first two books could have been a set of Dummies, but they weren’t . If a quality level can be strictly adhered to, I don’t see the problem.

8. The_Other_Swaroop() Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 pm

   @Swaroop : True, you rather be Donald Knuth

9. Swaroop Says:
   June 4th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

   @The_Other_Swaroop : Whoa! All hail Knuth. You can’t possibly be comparing it to that man

10. Navneeth Says:
    June 14th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    I was actually thinking about requesting you to write A Byte of Perl since you seemed to refer to it and make comparisons with it in the Python book so often. But after listening to your ‘interview’ that you posted, I dropped the plan — you are obviously busy with the start-up now.

    –Just another Byte of Your Fandom

11. Swaroop Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 1:13 am

    @Navneeth Thank you for the kind words! There’s no need to write “A Byte of Perl” because there is already Simon Cozen’s Beginning Perl (available as free PDFs) which was the original inspiration for me to write A Byte of Python

12. Navneeth Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    Thanks for the link, Swaroop.

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