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From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>
To: GNU Emacs users list <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
Subject: Best way to get hang of an elisp file?
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 18:52:32 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20131018185232.2084581e@aga-netbook> (raw)

Hi all,

I'd like to look at AUCTeX sources.  This means that I have a rather
large elisp file, and I'd like to skim through it.  Since I want to
know more or less /what/ functions, variables etc. there are and what
they /do/ instead of how they are implemented, I'm curious whether
there exists something like "outline mode", hiding everything but the
signature of a function and its docstring etc.  (Or better yet,
generating a file with everything but signatures and docstrings etc.
deleted.)  Or is there any other way to accomplish my goal?

I know that there are tags etc., but this is not what I want: I'd
prefer to skim through the file /sequentially/, just to learn what's in
there, I'm not interested in jumping to a function whose name I know -
since I don't know these names, and I want to learn them.

I also know that I can navigate through sexps, and probably jumping "to
the end of the outermost sexp" could be easy.  But I don't want to
limit myself to Emacs when reading the file: my workflow would be to
transfer it to an ebook reader (I spend more than one hour commuting
almost every day, you know;)).  (Of course, in this case hiding won't
help.)

I am also aware that there exists a Perl script doing exactly this
(http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/DOOM/Emacs-Run-ExtractDocs-0.03/lib/Emacs/Run/ExtractDocs.pm),
but for some strange reason I get the feeling that using Perl to
manipulate Elisp sources is... strange at least.

Any hints?

(If not, I'll try to implement something like this myself.)

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University



             reply	other threads:[~2013-10-18 16:52 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-10-18 16:52 Marcin Borkowski [this message]
2013-10-18 17:22 ` Best way to get hang of an elisp file? Thorsten Jolitz
2013-10-18 21:42 ` Drew Adams
2013-10-19  1:32 ` Stefan Monnier
2013-10-19  2:22   ` Drew Adams
2013-11-15 14:35   ` Sean Sieger
2013-11-16 16:06     ` Stefan Monnier
2013-11-18 20:40       ` Sean Sieger

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