Emacs: reply to Einar Mostad about reading the documentation
Hello Einar,
I am writing this as a public letter in response to the blog post you published on 2026-09-13 with the title An apology to Protesilaos Stavrou and David Wilson.
I accept the apology, though I think there is no need for one. I would personally not delete anything. Instead, I would add a link on top to point to the newer publication, plus some explanation. This teaches each of us to not take everything too seriously and to not pull the trigger before considering the case.
At any rate, I am fine with your choice.
Text is an especially difficult medium of communication because we do not exchange non-verbal cues. It is thus easy to imagine something which is not there and to then attribute bad intent to its author. For example, I find myself laughing at the way I formulated a certain phrase, though I can never communicate as much. Even if I write how I feel and/or what I am doing in the moment, it does not have the same effect.
Moreover, we may write something whose context is fully in our head yet is not known to the reader. Misunderstandings may thus arise.
To your point, I agree with you and have stated as much many times in video and in writing. To me, the source of truth for learning Emacs is the manual. Whatever users do to discover what Emacs has to offer, the manual remains the definitive resource.
I consider my publications complementary material, to the extent that they are informative. They effectively are a demonstration or reminder of what can be done. Though they are neither exhaustive at the time they are published nor current for every future version of Emacs. The viewer must thus be mindful to consult the official documentation.
Furthermore, Emacs is bigger than me. Even when I present my packages and/or ELisp code I have developed, I am always building on top of a corpus of work that far exceeds what I could produce in a lifetime. I mention this sometimes, but I cannot repeat it for everything I do because then I will become tiresome. Everyone should remember what is our common good in this community: Emacs.
Finally, I have warned at length against the attitude of taking shortcuts in Reply to @linkarzu about ‘What I Need From Emacs’ (2026-07-31). What I wrote on this topic is in relation to Emacs though applies to life in general. In short, we arrive quickly where we want only when we move slowly.
All the best,
Protesilaos (or simply “Prot”)