From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Improve the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual with intro sections Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 00:09:02 -0400 Message-ID: References: <80DB6796-41FE-4090-B1DD-BF5AE3F4D0CF@scratch.space> <83zi16ofny.fsf@gnu.org> <6A8BB190-FA64-4697-AFDA-EFBEB4886230@scratch.space> <90addb33-6797-b203-4a67-a2a6c201bd81@cs.ucla.edu> <97CEED22-57CE-4715-9239-1557F38AD994@gmail.com> <4BE52FAC-E20A-4588-90B7-2C8AB0D73059@gmail.com> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1526875634 2993 195.159.176.226 (21 May 2018 04:07:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 04:07:14 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Jean-Christophe Helary Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon May 21 06:07:10 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fKc6F-0000d4-9F for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 21 May 2018 06:07:07 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:48703 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fKc8K-0004sn-CU for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 21 May 2018 00:09:16 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:38424) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fKc8B-0004nX-4N for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 May 2018 00:09:08 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fKc89-0004d6-VE for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 May 2018 00:09:07 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:45421) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fKc87-0004c6-S9; Mon, 21 May 2018 00:09:03 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1fKc86-0004RH-HT; Mon, 21 May 2018 00:09:02 -0400 In-reply-to: <4BE52FAC-E20A-4588-90B7-2C8AB0D73059@gmail.com> (message from Jean-Christophe Helary on Sun, 20 May 2018 10:04:48 +0900) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:225501 Archived-At: [[[ 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. ]]] > Also, one of the things that I think is missing from the > Introduction is exercises. I agree this would be a good addition, once we make it correct for today's Emacs. One of the reasons it bends over backwards to explain to people who know absolutely nothing about programming is that the experience with Multics Emacs (written in Maclisp) around 1980 was that the secretaries that used it learned to write editing commands with a similar manual. People were very surprised by this. That manual didn't even say it was to teach programming. It was about "making your own editing commands" or some such thing. Peoplle speculated that the secretaries would not have tried if they though it was "programming" because they believed that programming was very hard and mere secretaries couldn't learn it. But when they didn't know it was "programming", they tried it and succeeded. We don't go to the point of covering up that the topic is programming. But we want people who think programming is far beyond them to be able to learn frm this book. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.