Re: Documentation Question

[Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>]

"Andrew Trevors" <adtrevors@plg2.math.uwaterloo.ca> writes:

> Now, why I've posted this here is that I haven't had much luck finding
> any design type documentation that could be used to formulate a
> conceptual architecture.  Is there any sort of docs or anything that
> is used to teach new programmers to the project, or is this type of
> thing usually up to the programmer himself by reading through
> code/comments.

For people joining the project, the source is the documentation,
specially for such tricky things as the redisplay engine.

Emacs basically implements a lisp interpreter in C, some editing
primitives in C, and the rest in lisp.  So you need to decide now
wether to focus on Emacs-as-Lisp-engine or
Emacs-as-developing-environment.

For C authors, the source is the documentation.  For Elisp authors,
Emacs provides an integrated help facility, and manuals.  Some of
these document technical things such as the command loop, but very
often Elisp authors do not need this kind of in-depth information.

A paper by RMS describing one of the earliest Emacs implementations,
and some of the design concepts still used:

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html

Alex.