unofficial mirror of bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
To: uzibalqa <uzibalqa@proton.me>
Cc: 64692-done@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#64692: Better descriptions of Cons Cells and Dotted Notation with real-life syntax
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:32:55 +0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87jzux5x2g.fsf@yahoo.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <zrvHeeHk_v8Nhm47JsJn1MC0-NrA-NNSflxNQpyGxooPPvnYese3l1W0FhtWV9Unp2rFtDc3psakQvpWITt-IIM4Yz-A1i7kZ1uKvhfcx30=@proton.me> (uzibalqa@proton.me's message of "Mon, 17 Jul 2023 20:17:19 +0000")

uzibalqa <uzibalqa@proton.me> writes:

> Have been looking at the documentation of menu-item described as
>
> (menu-item item-name real-binding . item-property-list)
>
> This requires a good understanding of Cons Cells and Dotted Notation.
> But I do not see a serious attempt to explain this.  Whereas the Emacs 
> Lisp Reference Manual isn't designed as a tutorial with explanations,
> the "Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" simply refers to the 
> "Emacs Lisp Reference Manual" for understanding Cons Cells and Dotted Notation.
>
> This means that the "Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" would benefit 
> from some real-life list syntax. Currently I find it short and far from real-life.
>
> For instance, whilst it cam became natural for users to make menus. it would be 
> difficult for them to understand that 
>
> (menu-item item-name real-binding . item-property-list)
>
> describes how "item-property-list" would not produce a list inside a list, but a 
> single "(menu-item ..." list.
>
> In general, the construction of menus should be better described as it is currently 
> too theoretical in the reference.

The node containing your example is located in the Emacs Lisp reference
manual, which contains two adequate descriptions of both dotted lists
and dotted pair notation.  I see no problem here; closing.





  reply	other threads:[~2023-07-18 10:32 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-07-17 20:17 bug#64692: Better descriptions of Cons Cells and Dotted Notation with real-life syntax uzibalqa via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-07-18 10:32 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors [this message]
2023-07-18 10:36   ` Ihor Radchenko
2023-07-18 12:42     ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-07-18 12:58       ` Christopher Dimech
2023-07-18 13:24         ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-07-18 17:20   ` Drew Adams
2023-07-18 17:32     ` uzibalqa via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-07-18 10:54 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-07-18 11:19   ` uzibalqa via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-07-18 17:13   ` Drew Adams

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=87jzux5x2g.fsf@yahoo.com \
    --to=bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org \
    --cc=64692-done@debbugs.gnu.org \
    --cc=luangruo@yahoo.com \
    --cc=uzibalqa@proton.me \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).