Do we need a "Stevens" book?

Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Olwe Melwasul]

I've not gotten very far with this idea; no one seems interested, but
I'll try it here anyway...

It seems to me that Emacs needs a W. Richard Stevens-style book. As
you may know, Stevens wrote the "Advanced Programming in the UNIX(R)
Environment" textbook that many of us used in college. Or maybe Emacs
needs something along the lines of the many "Linux gnarly/wooly
internals" books. Anyway, I would love to see a book that got into the
nitty-gritty of Emacs/elisp -- just like you see discussed here every
day on the help-gnu-emacs list.

Here's an example: comint. How do you effectively use comint? When
should you use comint? Okay, I can Google around and find one-off blog
discussions here and there about comint; I can read them all; I can
get confused; I can kludge something together ... and then find out
later that what I've done (as well as bloggers A, B, and C) is really
not "best practice" use of comint, i.e., that how I've used comint is
overkill or could have been done much simpler with <some other>.el.
Wouldn't it be nice to have one go-to source/book that thrashed out
comint usage once and for all?

Just skimming through all the elisp material (books, Internet, etc.),
it seems like a hodge-podge on a continuum between gems and junk just
waiting for a clear-speaking Richard Stevens to whip it all into
shape. Sure, the "official" texts will get you pretty far, but no way
are you ready to be a "best-practices" guru. The printed books seem
more like a "cookbook" than a real Stevens-style book. Maybe I'm all
wrong, but I think I like what the Racket/PLT people are doing. They
seem to be whipping the Scheme hodge-podge into a decent
best-practices, best-tools order.

Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm
really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing
background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a
receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta
book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and
please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it."

Olwe

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Olwe Melwasul <hercynianforest@gmail.com> writes:

> I've not gotten very far with this idea; no one seems interested, but
> I'll try it here anyway...
>
> It seems to me that Emacs needs a W. Richard Stevens-style book. As
> you may know, Stevens wrote the "Advanced Programming in the UNIX(R)
> Environment" textbook that many of us used in college. Or maybe Emacs
> needs something along the lines of the many "Linux gnarly/wooly
> internals" books. Anyway, I would love to see a book that got into the
> nitty-gritty of Emacs/elisp -- just like you see discussed here every
> day on the help-gnu-emacs list.
>
> Here's an example: comint. How do you effectively use comint? When
> should you use comint? Okay, I can Google around and find one-off blog
> discussions here and there about comint; I can read them all; I can
> get confused; I can kludge something together ... and then find out
> later that what I've done (as well as bloggers A, B, and C) is really
> not "best practice" use of comint, i.e., that how I've used comint is
> overkill or could have been done much simpler with <some other>.el.
> Wouldn't it be nice to have one go-to source/book that thrashed out
> comint usage once and for all?
>
> Just skimming through all the elisp material (books, Internet, etc.),
> it seems like a hodge-podge on a continuum between gems and junk just
> waiting for a clear-speaking Richard Stevens to whip it all into
> shape. Sure, the "official" texts will get you pretty far, but no way
> are you ready to be a "best-practices" guru. The printed books seem
> more like a "cookbook" than a real Stevens-style book. Maybe I'm all
> wrong, but I think I like what the Racket/PLT people are doing. They
> seem to be whipping the Scheme hodge-podge into a decent
> best-practices, best-tools order.
>
> Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm
> really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing
> background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a
> receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta
> book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and
> please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it."


It could be an "Olwe Melwasul" book.  It would be interesting if you
could indeed make it pedagogical and compelling enough so that
more students want to use and learn emacs instead of vi.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 28.07.2010 18:42, schrieb Olwe Melwasul:
> I've not gotten very far with this idea; no one seems interested, but
> I'll try it here anyway...
>
> It seems to me that Emacs needs a W. Richard Stevens-style book. As
> you may know, Stevens wrote the "Advanced Programming in the UNIX(R)
> Environment" textbook that many of us used in college. Or maybe Emacs
> needs something along the lines of the many "Linux gnarly/wooly
> internals" books. Anyway, I would love to see a book that got into the
> nitty-gritty of Emacs/elisp -- just like you see discussed here every
> day on the help-gnu-emacs list.
>
> Here's an example: comint. How do you effectively use comint? When
> should you use comint? Okay, I can Google around and find one-off blog
> discussions here and there about comint; I can read them all; I can
> get confused; I can kludge something together ... and then find out
> later that what I've done (as well as bloggers A, B, and C) is really
> not "best practice" use of comint, i.e., that how I've used comint is
> overkill or could have been done much simpler with<some other>.el.
> Wouldn't it be nice to have one go-to source/book that thrashed out
> comint usage once and for all?
>
> Just skimming through all the elisp material (books, Internet, etc.),
> it seems like a hodge-podge on a continuum between gems and junk just
> waiting for a clear-speaking Richard Stevens to whip it all into
> shape. Sure, the "official" texts will get you pretty far, but no way
> are you ready to be a "best-practices" guru. The printed books seem
> more like a "cookbook" than a real Stevens-style book. Maybe I'm all
> wrong, but I think I like what the Racket/PLT people are doing. They
> seem to be whipping the Scheme hodge-podge into a decent
> best-practices, best-tools order.
>
> Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm
> really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing
> background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a
> receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta
> book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and
> please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it."
>
> Olwe
>
>


Hi,

would welcome such an effort.

However, some obstacles are in the way:

a basic of Emacs is it's extensibility also for
non-programmers.

Everyone is encouraged to read Robert Chassell's  Emacs Lisp Intro,
to try out something.

Thats a great pleasure and source of
inovation. Naturally, as many hackers are not
professional programmers, a kind of wilderness grows
out of these efforts.

Nothing wrong so far IMHO.

After that I'd welcome a kind of mutually code critic,
as far as it's not used to intimidate neebies.

BTW started a kind of bill-board collecting examples, best practises
here:

http://repo.or.cz/w/elbb.git


Best regards,


Andreas

--
https://code.launchpad.net/~a-roehler/python-mode
https://code.launchpad.net/s-x-emacs-werkstatt/

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Richard Riley]

Olwe Melwasul <hercynianforest@gmail.com> writes:

> I've not gotten very far with this idea; no one seems interested, but
> I'll try it here anyway...
>
> It seems to me that Emacs needs a W. Richard Stevens-style book. As
> you may know, Stevens wrote the "Advanced Programming in the UNIX(R)
> Environment" textbook that many of us used in college. Or maybe Emacs
> needs something along the lines of the many "Linux gnarly/wooly
> internals" books. Anyway, I would love to see a book that got into the
> nitty-gritty of Emacs/elisp -- just like you see discussed here every
> day on the help-gnu-emacs list.
>
> Here's an example: comint. How do you effectively use comint? When
> should you use comint? Okay, I can Google around and find one-off blog
> discussions here and there about comint; I can read them all; I can
> get confused; I can kludge something together ... and then find out
> later that what I've done (as well as bloggers A, B, and C) is really
> not "best practice" use of comint, i.e., that how I've used comint is
> overkill or could have been done much simpler with <some other>.el.
> Wouldn't it be nice to have one go-to source/book that thrashed out
> comint usage once and for all?
>
> Just skimming through all the elisp material (books, Internet, etc.),
> it seems like a hodge-podge on a continuum between gems and junk just
> waiting for a clear-speaking Richard Stevens to whip it all into
> shape. Sure, the "official" texts will get you pretty far, but no way
> are you ready to be a "best-practices" guru. The printed books seem
> more like a "cookbook" than a real Stevens-style book. Maybe I'm all
> wrong, but I think I like what the Racket/PLT people are doing. They
> seem to be whipping the Scheme hodge-podge into a decent
> best-practices, best-tools order.
>
> Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm
> really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing
> background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a
> receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta
> book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and
> please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it."
>
> Olwe

I believe Sacha Chua is/was writing something along those lines.

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm
> really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing
> background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a
> receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta
> book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and
> please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it."

That would be welcome, yes (he said, after (and probably before as well)
years of cleaning up messy code).

Maybe a good way to do that is to try and get experienced Emacsers to do
the effort of recording all/some of the "cleanup" they perform (as
patches).  Then later on, someone can go through those patches and try
and extract principles from them.


        Stefan

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() Olwe Melwasul <hercynianforest@gmail.com>
() Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:42:14 -0500

   Okay, I can Google [...]

Why does the search start with Google (and continue with other
downstream, non-terminating, whirlpool-shaped, out of date, referenda)?
Why not go to the source?  The Emacs Lisp manual, the Emacs Lisp code,
the Emacs customization facility, the Emacs *scratch* buffer, the Emacs!

   Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time.

Pirsig sez: Quality is the moment of perception.
Afar dilutes this.  Stop it.

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[rustom]

On Jul 29, 11:40 am, Thien-Thi Nguyen <t...@gnuvola.org> wrote:
> () Olwe Melwasul <hercynianfor...@gmail.com>
> () Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:42:14 -0500
>
>    Okay, I can Google [...]
>
> Why does the search start with Google (and continue with other
> downstream, non-terminating, whirlpool-shaped, out of date, referenda)?
> Why not go to the source?  The Emacs Lisp manual, the Emacs Lisp code,
> the Emacs customization facility, the Emacs *scratch* buffer, the Emacs!

Because google searches the world wide web faster and better (usually)
than me searching my info dir
Unfortunately 'usually' is not 'always' -- hence Olwe's wish is valid

>
>    Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time.
>
> Pirsig sez: Quality is the moment of perception.
> Afar dilutes this.  Stop it.

My comint.el reads at 3538 lines.
Also a
$ find ~/local/share/emacs/23.1/lisp -name '*.el.gz'  |  xargs zcat
|  wc -l
returns 1076048

Spelt out, thats a million lines of elisp only in the default emacs
install

Now what exactly were you saying?

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Elena]

On Jul 29, 6:40 am, Thien-Thi Nguyen <t...@gnuvola.org> wrote:
> Why does the search start with Google (and continue with other
> downstream, non-terminating, whirlpool-shaped, out of date, referenda)?
> Why not go to the source?  The Emacs Lisp manual, the Emacs Lisp code,
> the Emacs customization facility, the Emacs *scratch* buffer, the Emacs!

Surprisingly enough - or not? - it seems few users do read the
manuals... I'm guilty of this too (and Emacs' manuals will be my
reading on my next vacations). Emacs is too much a complex (not
difficult) and powerful software to be used by intuition alone, unlike
many softwares we are used to.

RTFM! RTFM! RTFM! ...

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Fren Zeee]

On Jul 29, 2:55 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010-07-29
>
> On Jul 29, 3:02 am, Elena <egarr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jul 29, 6:40 am, Thien-Thi Nguyen <t...@gnuvola.org> wrote:
>
> > > Why does the search start with Google (and continue with other
> > > downstream, non-terminating, whirlpool-shaped, out of date, referenda)?
> > > Why not go to the source?  The Emacs Lisp manual, the Emacs Lisp code,
> > > the Emacs customization facility, the Emacs *scratch* buffer, the Emacs!
>
> > Surprisingly enough - or not? - it seems few users do read the
> > manuals... I'm guilty of this too (and Emacs' manuals will be my
> > reading on my next vacations).
>
> i always thought of doing this, but just never did. Not the emacs
> manual, nor the elisp manual. Over the past 12 years of using emacs
> daily, i probably have read only 1/2 of each, counted in a
> accumulative way.
>
> However, i have read cover to cover, word for word, systematically in
> a continued setting, several programing lang or software docs/books.
> For examples:
>
> --------------------
>
> • Microsoft Word manual i've basically read cover to cover in about
> 1992. (stopped using Microsoft Word completely in about 1999)
>
> --------------------
> • HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator manual. (2 books) I read cover
> to cover, i think twice, in about 1991. In fact this is how i learned
> programing, my first computer language, and the first i mastered.
>
> • HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator
>  http://xahlee.org/prog/hp28s/hp28s.html
>
> • Xah Lee's Computing Experience Bio
>  http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah_comp_exp.html
>
> --------------------
> • Mathematica manual (aka the Mathematica Book) i've read 3 times in
> separate years, from cover to cover. Note that Mathematica the
> software, the subject it deals with, is inherently a order of
> magnitude more complex than emacs. (the Mathematica book is over 1k
> pages.
> e.g.http://www.amazon.com/Mathematica-Book-Fourth-Stephen-Wolfram/dp/0521...
>
> since early 2000s, the software don't come with the book anymore, and
> am not sure if they still produce printed manual at all now... change
> with times...
> )
>
> --------------------
> • The Perl book/manual/“man pages”. I've read basically cover to cover
> in about 1998, 1999. (yes, i own the printed book. The printed book
> aka The Camel Book is edited version of the man pages. Actually i read
> all major perl books in late 2000s.
> See:
> • Pathetically Elational Regex Language (PERL)
>  http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/perlr.html
> )
>
> > Emacs is too much a complex (not
> > difficult) and powerful software to be used by intuition alone, unlike
> > many softwares we are used to.
>
> This is simply not true.
>
> For example, from personal experience, Blender, Second Life both are
> more complex than emacs, both for learning it, as well in terms of
> effort or complexity of their implementation, as well as inherent
> complexity by the nature of what the software do.
>
> Second Life i've been using for about 3 years now. see:
>
> • A Photographic Tour of Life in Second Life
>  http://xahlee.org/sl/index.html
>
> Blender i started to learn this year... but really too complex...
>
> I'd say, Blender or Second Life, each, are a order magnitude more
> complex and rich than emacs, either you consider simple use aspect, or
> deep use aspect such as extension and programing them.
>
> Also, depending on what you mean by use... for example, if you go into
> the programing aspect, then programing Java, C, C++, all are far more
> difficult and complex than programing emacs lisp. If you are thinking
> of using emacs lisp to program major/minor emacs modes, manipulate
> font, creating clients, etc, than, OS GUI platforms such as Mac or
> Windows is a order far more complex as well powerful.
>
> am writing this because i want to dispel certain cult phenomen about
> emacs... on the net we often hear some god-like thing about emacs, but
> i think if you look at it seriously, usually much of it doesn't mean
> anything.
>
> since i kept thinking about this issue over the years, and in argument
> with many old-time emacs users, i thought about the question: if there
> is any way, or comment, about emacs that we can justify in claming,
> about its complexity, deepth, god-like quality, superiority etc.
>
> i think to that question we need to be specific. If some claim is made
> specific, then it can be easily judged on its veracity. For examples,
> the following i think can be reasonably claimed:
>
> Emacs is most suitable tool for text manipulation tasks that are
> complex and not-well-defined and requires interactive human watch.
> (See: • Why Emacs is Still so Useful Today  http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_power_story.html)
>
> Emacs is most flexible, customizable, user extensible text editor.
>
> Emacs is the most well known and widely used editor that has a
> embedded programing language for text editing.
>
> Emacs system (emacs+elisp) for text manipulation is probably the most
> versatile computer language for text processing. (• Text Processing:
> Elisp vs Perl  http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_text_processing_lang.html
> )
>
> the above claims are still not so precise, but are items i think can
> be reasonably justified. Or can be made more precise, so that the sum
> of them can makes sense to say that emacs is quite powerful and
> versatile.
>
> On the other hand, the following i think are in the category of myths:
>
> • emacs manual is one of the best manual.
>
> • emacs's keyboard system is most well designed, or most extensible,
> or most consistent.
>
> • emacs keyboard shortcuts and the way they are mapped to emacs's text
> manipulation commands, is a very efficient system. (e.g. ratio of
> number of commands to call over arbitary text manipulation tasks)
>
> ...
>
> there are a lot such myths going around different communities. In perl
> community, it's filled to the brim about how perl is this or that
> great. In the Common Lisp community, you hear fantastic things about
> lisp being the god of all programing languages, while people in this
> community almost never mention emacs lisp as a language, and if they
> do, it's all sneer and spits and attacks to no ends. In the Scheme
> community, likewise you hear how it is the most beautiful, the most
> powerful, of all, period. ( See:http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/scheme_fail.htmlhttp://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lang_purity_cult_deception.html
>  ) In unix community, usually hated by lispers of all walks of life,
> you hear how unix is the most versatile, it's “KISS” et al
> philosophy's greatness, etc. (see • The Nature of the Unix Philosophyhttp://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/unix_phil.html) Likewise,
> there's also commercially generated myths, e.g. Java, about how it
> solves all cross-platform problems, and how OOP solves the world's
> programing problems, etc.
>
> all these spur from communities that developed certain cult following.
> Ultimately, it's more harmful than good.
>
> What i like to say, is that, yes i love emacs and you love emacs.
> However, when praising, be specific on what you like about it, and
> avoid cultivating some sense of greatness that's not based on fact or
> can't be very meaningful.
>
>   Xah
> ∑http://xahlee.org/
>
> ☄

If you say, and I take your word on face value, that emacs is so
simple - and that you spent so much effort on softwares that you later
abandoned like MS Word etc - explain here then, just the C code of
eval.c and eval.h and how to add a primitive.

A concrete example has to follow the very generalized claims.

Make a small demonstrative translation with a metacircular eval and
its translation to C side by side.
A small diagram to explain the garbage collector operation (Is he
using the mark and sweep or another algorithm?).

In addition, if Mathematica is Lisp in disguise with some additional
code for computer algebra, its not that much more complicated than
emacs.

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org>
() Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:40:46 +0200

   Afar dilutes this.  Stop it.

This was uncalled for.  I apologize for the tone.

WRT comint, the main message still stands, however.  Why don't you take
a look at comint.el and post specific questions about what you find?
Consider it a shared exercise in (re-)searching a future "Hacking Emacs"
book.  The discussion on this mailing list (apart from my chilipepper
pining headache induced vapidity) could be the start of something.

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Ken Hori]

I am all for any emacs / elisp visualizer. Emacs, at least its
documentations, has been devoid of pictures historically. I would love
to see it reverted.

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 5:28 AM, Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org> wrote:
> () Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org>
> () Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:40:46 +0200
>
>   Afar dilutes this.  Stop it.
>
> This was uncalled for.  I apologize for the tone.
>
> WRT comint, the main message still stands, however.  Why don't you take
> a look at comint.el and post specific questions about what you find?
> Consider it a shared exercise in (re-)searching a future "Hacking Emacs"
> book.  The discussion on this mailing list (apart from my chilipepper
> pining headache induced vapidity) could be the start of something.
>
>

have you read emacs manual cover to cover?; (was Do we need a "Stevens" book?)

[Xah Lee]

cleaned up and extended my previous post. Sentences and ideas made
more precise and detailed.

• Emacs Idolization: Have You Read the Emacs Manual From Cover to
Cover?
  http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_manual_cover_to_cover.html

plain text version follows:
--------------------------------------------------

Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:

    Why does the search start with Google (and continue with other
downstream, non-terminating, whirlpool-shaped, out of date,
referenda)? Why not go to the source?  The Emacs Lisp manual, the
Emacs Lisp code, the Emacs customization facility, the Emacs *scratch*
buffer, the Emacs!

Elena wrote:

    Surprisingly enough - or not? - it seems few users do read the
manuals... I'm guilty of this too (and Emacs' manuals will be my
reading on my next vacations).

I always thought of doing this, but it never happened. Not the emacs
manual, nor the elisp manual. Over the past 12 years of using emacs
daily, i have read perhaps 1/3 of the emacs manual and 1/2 elisp
manual, counted in a accumulative way.

However, i have read cover to cover, word for word, systematically in
a continued setting, several programing lang or software manuals. Some
of these software are quite more deeper than emacs. Here they are from
my recollection.

(Note: emacs manual for emacs 22 is 589 pages in printed form, and
elisp manual for emacs 21 is 900 pages.)

-------------------------
Microsoft Word Manual

Microsoft Word manual i think i've read most of it in about 1992.
Though, i can't remember i actually read the manual systematically or
just become expert by using and scanning it when needed. (i stopped
using Microsoft Word about 1998.)

-------------------------
HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator

HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator manual. (2 books) I read cover
to cover, twice, in about 1991. In fact this is how i learned
programing, my first computer language, and the first i mastered.

(See: HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator and Xah Lee's Computing
Experience Bio. )

-------------------------
The Mathematica Book

Mathematica manual (aka the Mathematica Book amazon ). I've read it 3
times in separate years, systematically, from cover to cover. This all
happened in 1990s. Note that Mathematica the language, the subject it
deals with, is inherently a order of magnitude more complex than
emacs. The Mathematica book is 1381 pages, 3 kilograms. Heavy enough
to hit someone to cause concussion.

This 4th edition published in 1999, is the last printed edition. They
no longer print it nor come with the software. Note how commercial
orgs have adopted changes with the changing industry.

-------------------------
The Perl Book

The Perl Book. I've read basically cover to cover in about 1998, 1999.
(yes, i own the printed book. The printed book aka The Camel Book is
edited version of Perl's man pages. Actually i've read all major perl
books from 1997 to ~2000. (See: Pathetically Elational Regex Language
(PERL))

-------------------------
PHP manual

The PHP manual (online). Roughly read reasonably all of it in about a
week, in 2005. (scanned in detail on parts that do not require
detailed understanding at first.)

-------------------------
MySQL manual

MySQL manual, online. Read it at the same time i read PHP manual from
cover to cover, in 2005. Took me about week or two. I've been working
with SQL or variants daily in a day job during 1998 to 2002, but
haven't touched it for 2 years. So this reading is to brush up my SQL,
as well as first time comprehensive reading of MySQL documentation in
particular.

-------------------------
Habit of Reading Manuals

Reading manuals systematically is kinda a habit, developed from early
1990s as part of a method to study English, and also somewhat a old-
fashioned and stubburn mindset of wanting to learn everything from
ground up, throughly, and from the original source. Reading manuals,
is also how i learned most of my proprograming. Just about any
software, language, OS, i used from about 1991 to about early 2000s, i
tried to read their manuals systematically from cover to cover, not
missing any word. This mentality and its severity, very gradually
declined over the past 20 years. Today, i do not take the pain to
systematically read their manuals of any new software i have to learn.
(if it exists at all; or isn't some haphazard wiki, or random notes by
student joe (such as Python's docs. See: Python Documentation
Problems).)

(other manuals i've read quite a lot for example: vast unix man pages,
Apache 1.x, Sun Microsystem's Solaris (3 volumes) (2000), Scheme R4RS
(1998), Java, Microsoft's JScript (~2005), Python (~2005), Mac OS X
Server official doc from Apple, ... (See: Examples Of Quality
Documentation In The Computing Industry) )

=================================
Is Emacs Godsend?

Elena wrote:

    Emacs is too much a complex (not difficult) and powerful software
to be used by intuition alone, unlike many softwares we are used to.

This is simply not true.

For example, from personal experience, Blender, Second Life both are
more complex than emacs, both for learning it, as well in terms of
effort or complexity of their implementation, as well as inherent
complexity by the nature of what these software's purpose.

Second Life i've been using for about 3 years now. (See: A
Photographic Tour of Life in Second Life.)

Blender i started to learn this year... but quite too complex and
difficult to get started.

I'd say, Blender or Second Life, each, are a order magnitude more
complex and rich than emacs. Either considered from simple use aspect,
or in-depth use aspect such as coding in their scripting languages to
use them fully. (akin to coding emacs lisp.)

Also, depending on what you mean by use... for example, if you take
perspective of emacs lisp as a language, then, compared to programing
Java, C, C++, all are quite deeper than elisp and takes longer to
explore before reaching diminishing returns. If you take the
perspective of emacs as programing framework for creating applications
such as file manager, ftp client, irc client, mp3 manager, etc, then,
compared to proper software frameworks such as Mac OS and Windows,
both are a order far more complex, of bottomless learning depth, as
well far more powerful.

=================================
Emacs Cult and Idolization

Am writing this because i want to dispel the cult phenomenon
surrounding emacs. On the net we often hear some magical qualities
about emacs, but i think if you look at it seriously, usually much of
it are not scientifically meaningful.

Since this issue kept cropping up in my mind over the past ~5 years,
in argument with many old-time emacs users, i thought about the
question: whether there is any superiority or god-like quality about
emacs that we can actually claim and be justified.

I think to that question we need to be concrete and specific. If a
claim is made concrete, then its veracity can be more easily judged.
For examples, the following i think can be reasonably claimed:

    * Emacs is the most suitable tool for text manipulation tasks that
are complex and not-well-defined and requires interactive human watch.
(See: Why Emacs is Still so Useful Today.)
    * Emacs is most flexible, customizable, user extensible text
editor.
    * Emacs is the most well known and widely used editor that has a
embedded programing language for text editing.
    * The Emacs system with Emacs Lisp is probably the most versatile
computer language for text processing. (See: Text Processing: Elisp vs
Perl.)

The above claims are still not so precise, but are items i think can
be reasonably justified. Or can be made more precise, so that the sum
of them can make sense, and conclude that emacs is quite powerful and
versatile.

On the other hand, the following i think are in the category of myths:

    * ? Emacs manual would rank among the top 100 best in today's
software.
    * ? Emacs's keyboard system is among the better designed, in its
efficiency, or extensibility, or consistency, or ergonomics.
    * ? Emacs keyboard shortcuts and the way they are mapped to
emacs's text manipulation commands, is a very efficient system. (e.g.
ratio of number of commands to call over arbitrary text manipulation
tasks)
    * ? Emacs is among the top one thousand major software today.
    * ? Emacs and system is among the top one thousand software with
respect to the software's power, or versatility, or usefulness.
    * ? Emacs's implementation considered as a software project today
is among the top one thousand software in terms of complexity, size,
or achievement.

...

There are a lot such myths going around different communities. In perl
community, it's filled to the brim about how perl is everything and
great. In the Common Lisp community, you hear fantastic things about
lisp being the god of all programing languages, while they almost
never mention emacs lisp as a language, and if they do, it's all sneer
and spits and attacks to no ends. In the Scheme community, likewise
you hear how it is the most beautiful, the most elegant, and the most
powerful, of all, with its call-cc and tail recursion and whatnot.
( See: Scheme & Failure and Language, Purity, Cult, and Deception ) In
unix community, which is usually hated by lispers of any faction, you
hear how unix is the most versatile, the greatness of its “Unix
philosophy” and “KISS” principles. (See: The Nature of the Unix
Philosophy.) Likewise, there's also commercially generated myths, e.g.
Java, about how it solves all cross-platform problems, and how OOP
solves the world's programing problems, etc. (See: What are OOP's
Jargons and Complexities)

All these spur from communities that developed certain cult following.
Ultimately, it's more harmful than good.

What i'd like to say, is that, yes i love emacs and you love emacs.
However, when praising, be concrete and specific on what you like
about it, and avoid idolization. Because, idolization cultivates cult-
like mindset, and that is ultimately damaging.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book?

[Joseph Brenner]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm
>> really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing
>> background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a
>> receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta
>> book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and
>> please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it."
>
> That would be welcome, yes (he said, after (and probably before as well)
> years of cleaning up messy code).
>
> Maybe a good way to do that is to try and get experienced Emacsers to do
> the effort of recording all/some of the "cleanup" they perform (as
> patches).  Then later on, someone can go through those patches and try
> and extract principles from them.

Sounds good, of course.  A page at the emacswiki?

I can think of an even simpler step that would be useful:

Make a list of files in the code base that are already cleaned
up, that you feel are good examples of the best practice in coding.

Possibly this could just be a page up at the emacswiki, too.

Re: have you read emacs manual cover to cover?; (was Do we need a "Stevens" book?)

[Xah Lee]

On Jul 30, 10:47 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> cleaned up and extended my previous post. Sentences and ideas made
> more precise and detailed.
>
> • Emacs Idolization: Have You Read the Emacs Manual From Cover to
> Cover?
> http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_manual_cover_to_cover.html

2010-08-08

I ran into a Chinese blog article on emacs today.  It's written in a
“Question & Answer” format. Quite funny and well done.  It's at:
http://yehnan.blogspot.com/2010/06/gnu-emacs-on-windows.html

there's a interesting section about emacs documentation. Here's a
excerpt:

「
問：這些文件怎麼看起來怪怪的？
答：我覺得Emacs官方寫的文件都很奇怪很囉嗦，因為：

第一，寫的人把用的人都當做初學者，沒有使用編輯器的經驗、甚至沒有使用電腦的經驗。看看這段話：
"Files are named units of text which are stored by the operating
system for you to retrieve later by name."，拜託，我還需要你教我“檔案”是什麼東西嗎？

第二，寫文件的人似乎停留在1980年代，裡面很多術語都很老舊了，看看這個：
" We use the term frame to mean the entire terminal screen or
graphical window used by Emacs."、"The main area of the frame, below
the tool bar (if one exists) and above the echo area, is called the
window."，哇哩咧，你的frame是我的window，你的window又是什麼鬼？

第三，寫文件的人還在緬懷以前的時光，有些在以前算特殊的功能，已經不再特殊了，例如：
"You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
self-
documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs."，啥？self-
documenting？哪個編輯器沒有說明文件啊？extensible, customizable？現在很多編輯器多多少少都可以客製化了。

第四，有些功能太過強大，所以解釋起來很麻煩：
"You can yank text from the kill ring into any position in a buffer,
including a position in a different buffer; the kill ring is shared by
all buffers."，yank&kill在這裡等於cut&paste，而kill ring呢？大概是指你cut好幾次後，不會只剩下最後一次
cut的東西，之前的都還在kill ring裡面。

第五，因為Emacs以鍵盤為主，雖然現在有滑鼠可以用了，可是其中心思想還是要求所有的功能動作都要能用鍵盤達到，以至於像“把一段文字圈選”這種以
滑鼠可以輕易達到的功能，手冊要用好多篇幅講解鍵盤的指令。譬如說：
"Setting the mark at a position in the text also activates it. When
the mark is active, Emacs indicates the extent of the region by
highlighting the text within it, using the region face. After certain
non-motion commands, including any command that changes the text in
the buffer, Emacs automatically deactivates the mark; this turns off the
highlighting. "，什麼鬼啊，滑鼠點一點拉一拉就好了啦。
」

--------------------------------------------------

here's my translation

--------------------------------------------------

Q: These docs look odd?

A: I think emacs's official doc are all odd and verbose, because:

(1) The writer thinks users are all beginners, with no experience in
using a editor, even no experience in using a computer. Look at this
sentence:

“Files are named units of text which are stored by the operating
system for you to retrieve later by name.”.

O please, do i need to be told what's a file?

(2) The author seems to have stopped in the 1980s, lots of terms have
gone obsolete. Look at these:

«We use the term frame to mean the entire terminal screen or graphical
window used by Emacs.»,

«The main area of the frame, below the tool bar (if one exists) and
above the echo area, is called the window.»

Wow, your “frame” is my “window”, then what gobling is your “window”?

(3) Author is nostalgic of the past era; some advanced features are no
longer advanced. Example:

«You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
self- documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.»

huh? “self-documenting”? What editor doesn't have documentation?
“extensible, customizable”? Nowadays many editors all can be
customized to some degree.

(4) Some features are too powerful, so explanation is difficult:

«You can yank text from the kill ring into any position in a buffer,
including a position in a different buffer; the kill ring is shared by
all buffers.»

The “yank&kill” here is like “cut&paste”, then what's “kill ring”?
Perhaps that means when you cut many times, it won't leave just the
last cut text, previous cuts are all still in “kill ring”.

(5) Because Emacs uses keyboard as its primary input, although these
days we have mouse, but the core design thinking still requires all
functionalities to be operable with a keyboard. For example, “select a
text”. This can be easily done with a mouse, thus the manual must use
lots words to explain how this is done with keyboard. Example:

«Setting the mark at a position in the text also activates it. When
the mark is active, Emacs indicates the extent of the region by
highlighting the text within it, using the region face. After certain
non-motion commands, including any command that changes the text in
the buffer, Emacs automatically deactivates the mark; this turns off the
highlighting.»

what the hell, a click here and a drag there with the mouse and be
done with it.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄