Re: Is Emacs very alive, active and improving?

[wgreenhouse@riseup.net (W. Greenhouse)]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> I've heard that Emacs is self-documenting numerous times, and, if
> this refers to the docstrings of Elisp functions, I have to say
> "self-documenting" is stretching the truth. The docstrings are a
> handy way to provide documentation, and the Emacs access to that
> documentation is provided instantly upon evaluation of the defun
> (of if it is some other thing: a variable, perhaps). This is all
> well and good, but the documentation has to be written
> nonetheless, like any other documentation.
>
> Emacs can also tell you the parameters of a function, where it is
> defined (and provide hyperlinks), etc., and this is indispensable
> knowledge, for sure - but perhaps not "documentation" as much as a
> specification for a person who already knows the workings.

Right, I was referring to the describe-* family of commands, the
apropos-* commands, and the
find-function/find-library/find-variable/find-face-definition commands,
as well as the Customize system.  I realize that documentation doesn't
write itself, that the parameters of a function on their own may be
rather mysterious, and that machine-generated documentation generally
sucks.  Nonetheless, Emacs provides the user with an unusually rich set
of ways of finding out about the environment's current state and the
workings and customization possibilities of a program, as well as
discovering things you didn't know you were looking for.  I take
"self-documenting" to mean "capable of introspection in a variety of
context-useful ways".  If we updated the Emacs one-line description for
2013, we'd probably call it the "extensible, customizable, introspective
editor".  Or not--that makes it sound like a neurotic existentialist
writer!