Re: Function to retrieve package version

["Paul W. Rankin" <hello@paulwrankin.com>]

On Wed, May 22 2019, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Please don't do that.  The manual is very long already.  That 
> makes
> printing expensive.  Before we add a new topic, we need to 
> consider
> whether the benefit is worth the increase in cost.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here Richard? Do you mean 
people printing the Elisp manual themselves, or does the FSF print 
copies of the Elisp manual gratis?

If the former, surely the benefit of Emacs Lisp package 
maintainers knowing about the built-in "utility functions for 
Emacs Lisp maintainers" outweighs the miniscule additional cost of 
a couple of paragraphs that might add a single page to the printed 
output, which at the very most (barring some sort of OCD 
condition) will be printed once per major release?

And if I'm going to the trouble/expense of printing the entire 
Elisp manual, I damn sure want it to be as complete as possible, 
rather than later discover it's missing key topics and so will 
require a reprint. The idea that I'm being miserly about my stock 
of printer paper in this scenario is a little unrealistic...