Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I'd like people to look at the NEWS files for Emacs 26, Emacs 25 and
Emacs 24 and extract the parts that are relevant to the Emacs manual.

Those are the parts about user commands and user-visible behavior,
but excluding modes that are not described in the Emacs manual.

The idea is for someone who is experienced to do this just once, and
then we will post the results in gnu.org/software/emacs for checkers
to review.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Richard Stallman]

Would someone please look at the NEWS files for Emacs 26, Emacs 25 and
Emacs 24 and extract the parts that are relevant to the Emacs manual?

THe parts to include are those about changes in user commands and
user-visible behavior, but excluding changes in modes that are not
documented in the Emacs manual (which is most of them).

The idea is for someone who is experienced to do this just once, so we
can post the results in gnu.org/software/emacs for checkers to review.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2017 18:08:16 -0400
> 
> Would someone please look at the NEWS files for Emacs 26, Emacs 25 and
> Emacs 24 and extract the parts that are relevant to the Emacs manual?
> 
> THe parts to include are those about changes in user commands and
> user-visible behavior, but excluding changes in modes that are not
> documented in the Emacs manual (which is most of them).

Maybe I misunderstand, but don't the "+++" markers in NEWS already
tell that?

Re: Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Would someone please look at the NEWS files for Emacs 26, Emacs 25 and
  > > Emacs 24 and extract the parts that are relevant to the Emacs manual?
  > > 
  > > THe parts to include are those about changes in user commands and
  > > user-visible behavior, but excluding changes in modes that are not
  > > documented in the Emacs manual (which is most of them).

  > Maybe I misunderstand, but don't the "+++" markers in NEWS already
  > tell that?

Whether the +++ markings are a reliable guide depends on the state of
work on NEWS.  They might not yet have been put in; they might have
been removed.  An item might have a --- instead, put there because
someone mistakenly thought that item isn't pertinent to the Emacs
Manual.

Supposing that at present all pertineny items have a +++ marking, they
don't necessarily refer to the Emacs Manual; some indicate that a
feature has been documented in the Emacs Lisp Manual.

But even that isn't the deepest point here.  Let's suppose that the
items with +++ are exactly the items a reviewer of the Emacs Manual
shoulod look at.  Is that equivalent to what I've asked for?

Absolutely not!  This is not a math exercise, this is making it easy
for others to do a job we are asking them to do.

With +++ you can (maybe) find the pertinent parts, if you know the
rules and you think about it.

With the filtered NEWS file, you could find them effortlessly.

Please let's make this effortless, to encourage people to check
parts of the Emacs Manual.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 17:55:15 -0400
> 
>   > > THe parts to include are those about changes in user commands and
>   > > user-visible behavior, but excluding changes in modes that are not
>   > > documented in the Emacs manual (which is most of them).
> 
>   > Maybe I misunderstand, but don't the "+++" markers in NEWS already
>   > tell that?
> 
> Whether the +++ markings are a reliable guide depends on the state of
> work on NEWS.  They might not yet have been put in; they might have
> been removed.  An item might have a --- instead, put there because
> someone mistakenly thought that item isn't pertinent to the Emacs
> Manual.

Since I've already asked Nicolas to make a pretest for Emacs 26.1, it
should be clear that NEWS was already reviewed (by me in this case),
and any such blunders, if there were ones, were already fixed.

> Supposing that at present all pertineny items have a +++ marking, they
> don't necessarily refer to the Emacs Manual; some indicate that a
> feature has been documented in the Emacs Lisp Manual.

NEWS has separate sections for Lisp and non-Lisp changes.

Re: Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Since I've already asked Nicolas to make a pretest for Emacs 26.1, it
  > should be clear that NEWS was already reviewed (by me in this case),
  > and any such blunders, if there were ones, were already fixed.

I'm glad this is so.  I didn't know how things stood.

However, my main point is the last one: regardless of the current state
of marking up NEWS, we still need someone to collect just the parts
that checkers should read.

  > NEWS has separate sections for Lisp and non-Lisp changes.

To make things really easy, we should omit the parts of NEWS that
aren't pertinent and someone doesn't need to read for this purpose.

Would someone please volunteer to do it?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I'd like people to look at the NEWS files for Emacs 26, Emacs 25 and
Emacs 24 and extract the parts that are relevant to the Emacs manual.

Those are the parts about user commands and user-visible behavior,
but excluding modes that are not described in the Emacs manual.

The idea is for someone who is experienced to do this just once, and
then we will post the results in gnu.org/software/emacs for checkers
to review.

Checking the Emacs 26 manual is waiting for this; would someone please
do it?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.