From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs documentation sources Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:00:24 +0200 Organization: Organization?!? Message-ID: <854phd9zkn.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> References: <711a73df0709260104l97cb41ft5fee3a882cef05c9@mail.gmail.com> <85ve9x431f.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <85y7eseiom.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <858x6reucb.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <851wcibcz2.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1191087652 20403 80.91.229.12 (29 Sep 2007 17:40:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:40:52 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 29 19:40:47 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IbgIz-0001YG-IR for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:40:41 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IbgIv-0006ke-Oa for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:40:37 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool4.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help X-Face: 2FEFf>]>q>2iw=B6, xrUubRI>pR&Ml9=ao@P@i)L:\urd*t9M~y1^:+Y]'C0~{mAl`oQuAl \!3KEIp?*w`|bL5qr,H)LFO6Q=qx~iH4DN; i"; /yuIsqbLLCh/!U#X[S~(5eZ41to5f%E@'ELIi$t^ Vc\LWP@J5p^rst0+('>Er0=^1{]M9!p?&:\z]|;&=NP3AhB!B_bi^]Pfkw User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Ya1qhfME1Qzg5+ngAM65uVLVJYo= Original-Lines: 54 Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Sep 2007 19:00:18 CEST Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 8753be22.newsspool4.arcor-online.net Original-X-Trace: DXC=::[?Jmi<1mZ\PS5Xo=M[RV4IUK List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:47980 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii writes: >> From: David Kastrup >> Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:13:21 +0200 >> >> But DOC strings are not even loaded _until_ you look at >> them explicitly. > > You seem to forget about the `apropos-*' commands (which were the > reason for this thread in the first place). The only apropos command that gets possibly involved here is C-u C-h d, namely apropos-documentation with DO-ALL set. And then the _size_ of the docs strings is mostly irrelevant, the performance is impacted by the _number_ of them. >> So your claim that DOC strings have to be kept terse for memory >> conversation reasons is plain and unadulterated nonsense. And this >> utterly silly smokescreen followup thread (where you, quite >> prudently, snip out the original _relevant_ wrong claim of yours >> time and again in order to argue some less embarrassing points) >> does not change that. > > I admire your argument culture and style, David. Sorry for calling your game. >> Again, here is your quote which started this: >> >> Doc strings not always target newbies, because they cannot be too >> wordy (due to considerations of memory footprint of the running >> Emacs). >> >> Please don't omit this quote if you feel you want to continue to >> pretend defending it. > > Done. Fine. Now is there anybody except Eli that would thing it likely that DOC strings are necessary because of the memory footprint of the running Emacs? While the memory footprint of the running Emacs is presumably not affected by a non-terse manual? At the current point of time, this argument is just specious. In the long long history of Emacs, there has been a time indeed when DOC strings were stored in memory (rather than passed through temporarily on demand). To stop this from being a possible concern, they have been externalized to disk files. Likely somewhere in the Emacs 18.* series. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum