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Comment by evangineer | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr

Use Emacs 23 to create a distraction-free writing environment using org-mode, darkroom-mode & markdown-mode.

I'm not directing this at you personally, even though I am responding to your comment, but do we really need "tl;dr" type comments here on Hacker News?

IMO, "tl;dr" is a misnomer. Or at least, I don't value such a thing as an alternative to reading the post. There's no way that one line captures the whole article, it captures that one person's main takeaway. Rather than assuming that such a thing tells me everything I need to know, or thinking it can help me understand the nuänces of the discussion, I take it as one reader's executive summary which will help me decide whether to read the entire post.

In this case, I read it as "A good read if you want to know how/why/whether to use Emacs-23 as a distraction-free writing environment."

The post has other value, of course, and I wouldn't object if someone else were to write something like:

tl;dr: Emacs continues to evolve, e.g. It's now as good a tool for writers as Scrivener or dedicated distraction-free editors.

That would give me another reason to read the post if I wasn't persuaded by the first. Summaries (including the title, natch) provide some value that a simple upvote score does not capture.

I guess the question is whether it's a misnomer or not.

I find "Too Long Don't Read" to be a dismissive attitude that I don't want here on HN, so I almost always vote down such comments (yes, including the ancestor here). But I appreciate executive summaries, and frequently vote them up to encourage their creation even if I didn't find the article itself compelling.

I realize that "TL;DR" is "just an abbreviation", but parsimony encourages me to conclude that it still connotes the words that it abbreviates and represents an attitude I do not like. Perhaps I'm reading too much into word choice, but in the end, word choice is really what makes the comments here worth reading.

tl;dr: http://raganwald.posterous.com/why-i-downvote-tldr-comments-...

I can't speak for HN, but I appreciate them. It's nice to see what other people get out of the articles. Usually the discussions here are more interesting than the article so it also allows me to understand what everyone is talking about without having to read sometimes lengthy articles.

I am ashamed, but part of the reason I read HN is for the tl;dr comments...

It really depends. evangineer's tl;dr comment was a decently accurate summarization of the content of the article. If you're meaning the typical "tl;dr [witty/sarcastic comment about TFA's author's shortcomings]", sure, those don't belong on hn. evangineer's comment seemed genuinely useful, though.

Thanks. I've been using tl;dr as a shorthand for this is my summary of the article in question. I now appreciate that not everybody sees it like that. In future, I shall refrain from using tl;dr and just summarize without any preamble.

Beginning the comment with "Summary:" would be helpful.

> do we really need "tl;dr" type comments here on Hacker News

Yes we do. They serve to save people time.

They would save more time by simply not coming here. They can save lots and lots of time by not reading anything. Additional knowledge takes time to read and then adds time to your decision making process. Too many choices. These people should just write out a schedule and keep to it perfectly. No distractions, no extras, no discovery. No need for people to read things to understand them. Simply let someone else read them for you and tell you what to think.

I think your criticism would carry more weight if this news site wasn't a firehose linkdump format.

  They serve to save people time.

Or to draw attention to a succinctly formulated essence of an article. They help me in focussing on the articles that may be of interest.

Everyone is already using a filter (HN) to avoid doing some work: reading everything that is posted on the web.

For me, tldr is a favor folks more interested than me in some subject do, and I should do the same when I subject I really care turns up.

tldr is an act of love.

For linux environments, instead of darkroom-mode you can put this in your .emacs file to toggle fullscreen:

  ;;; Fullscreen
  (defun switch-full-screen ()
    (interactive)
    (shell-command "wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -btoggle,fullscreen"))

  (global-set-key (kbd "<f12>") 'switch-full-screen)

Alternative if you don't have wmctrl installed (not default in Ubuntu for example):

  ;; Fullscreen
  (defun switch-full-screen ()
    (interactive)
    (x-send-client-message nil 0 nil "_NET_WM_STATE" 32
                           '(2 "_NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN" 0)))

You can also start using xmonad.

Another alternative that, AFAICS, doesn't use anything external to emacs

    ;;; Full-screen mode
   (defun toggle-max-window ()
      (interactive)
      (set-frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen
                       (if (frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen)
                           nil
                         'fullboth)))
   (global-set-key (kbd "<C-M-return>") 'toggle-max-window)

  sudo apt-get install emacs23-nox

;-)

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