Holistic Emacs/AUC TeX/preview-latex/LaTeX/amsmath tutorial?

Hi,

I was thinking about what documentation one would want to set up
complete newbies with.  Like, when one was bundling a complete system
including Emacs with AUCTeX and preview-latex preinstalled, and some
TeX distribution like fpTeX or MikTeX or TeXlive.  Or maybe a complete
bootable Linux system like Knoppix or something, that maybe got the
bulk via Internet so that people could just start out with a
specialized TeX workstation install.  Quite a few possibilities.

Anyhow, I think for the more common case of crashing newbies into
everything, the current dispersion of learning material does not cut
it.

I am thinking of some sort of tutorial along the side of
not-so-short-introduction to LaTeX, with lots of cross references to
more elaborate documentation, but which is intended mostly as an
online reference, telling people to "move the cursor there.  Now
press C-c C-p C-e to see what the typeset result would look like.  If
you now move with cursor left-right into the preview, you should see
the source again.  Now insert an equation environment of your own.
You can do this from the menu LaTeX/Insert Environment.  As you can
see from the the menu, the keyboard shortcut for this will be C-c
C-e".  You get the drift.

The walk-through tutorial should introduce people at the same time
into editing features from AUCTeX and RefTeX, as well as basic LaTeX
and some more advanced stuff.  And of course, Emacs packages and
features worth knowing about for editing purposes should be mentioned
as well.

Of course, some people would want to skip some chapters they already
know about.  Using the document navigation possibilities of RefTeX,
that would be reasonably simple to do.

I think it very important to specialize a tutorial for a specific
editing platform so as to be able to minimize the amount of parallel
reading concerning, say, RefTeX+AUCTeX+LaTeX material when all the
user wants to do is manage cross references.  The tutorials would be
strictly kept under an open document license, so that spinoffs for
different platforms (like WinEdt and the like) will be possible as
long as a maintainer for such platform volunteers.

I would volunteer to manage the main project efforts, incorporate
usability suggestions that writers come up with into Emacs (where I am
codeveloper), AUCTeX (head maintainer), preview-latex (main author and
maintainer) and also LaTeX (contributor of a few specialized styles
and stuff).  If there is sufficient interest for paper or CD
circulation eventually, I'll try doing what is necessary to get this
going.  And pocket whatever I can reasonably make from this as well as
trying to raise funds and cooperation for such a project elsewhere in
order to keep afloat as well as I can.  One obvious task would be to
create specialized versions for mathematicians, literature scientists,
liberal arts people and so on: particular newbies have particular
demands, and at least the introductory sections should cater for
that.  When going more into detail, it might make sense to make
separate chapters for the various target audience.  The electronic
versions would basically include everything under the sun, the
printed versions might be stripped somewhat: ultimately people are
supposed to get the whole story, if needed, interactively.

Suggestions, volunteers, comments, funds, manpower?

I am currently having so many ideas about what could and should be
done with regard to TeX/LaTeX that I could keep myself busy for
years.  So I'd better concentrate on getting others to do the job,
and me to manage collecting the bucks, uh, contributions.

You know, "winning things", like Chief Bromden puts it to McMurphy.

Followups directed to comp.text.tex in order to keep them more or less
in one place.  I would be grateful if interested parties followed them
there, unless they are just involved with one of the more specialized
mailing lists.  I'll try to keep the different media up to date,
though.

Waiting for your enthusiastic participation.  If we get enough
willing contributors to fill in the gaps, I'll volunteer to put up a
framework if nobody else does so, and walk prospective contributors
through any problems they might have with AUC TeX/preview-latex/Emacs
installation and stuff.  Ok, I do this anyway, but it would be nice
if people considered contributions as they see fit, nevertheless.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum