On 6 December 2016 at 18:01, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
> > Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2016 17:46:23 +0000
> > Cc: 25107@debbugs.gnu.org
> >
> >  I agree with the general point, but in this case we are talking about
> >  mentioning a small number of file names in the doc string. Doesn't
> >  seem like a burden to me, and whoever put that information there
> >  probably didn't see it as such, either.
> >
> > ​In that case I will add the information for Enchant. At least it is not
> likely to change.​
>
> Sure, that's what I meant.
>
> >  I was thinking about someone using the result to report the version
> >  they have, e.g. as part of a bug report.
> >
> > ​​Version of what? If of Emacs, then that version information is already
> provided by report-emacs-bug. If of a
> > spellchecker, then that information is still provided by the revised
> message.
>
> It's admittedly a minor issue, but just to make myself clear: I
> thought about reporting the version not as part of report-emacs-bug.
>
> Or let me ask this: why does ispell-version at all exist?  Perhaps I'm
> confused about its purpose.
>

​My understanding is that it exists for reporting bugs in the combination
of ispell.el and whatever spell checker you are using. When ispell.el was
distributed as third-party code, there were extra two useful pieces of
information: the version of the spell-checker program, and the version of
ispell.el.

Now, there is just one extra piece of information, the version of the
spell-checker program.

One would presumably also want the version of Emacs in a bug report, but we
don't print this out all over the place; we provide the convenience of
report-emacs-bug, and otherwise expect users to put it manually in the
report.

​So, emacs-version does not substitute for the old ispell.el version; the
old ispell.el version has simply become unnecessary, and I've removed it.
The Emacs version is still needed for a bug report, but there's no reason
that ispell.el (or any other core package) should show emacs-version
specially, when there are already user-friendly ways to automatically put
it in bug reports.​

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org