Re: RE: Auto Fill Comments

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2020 at 9:42 AM
> From: tomas@tuxteam.de
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: RE: Auto Fill Comments
>
> On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 12:22:11AM +0100, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> > That's a great example.  We can have a function that sets fill-column
> > as buffer-local and hook it to programming mode, c-mode say.
>
> Why mix a mode in? This makes the example unnecessarily complex.
> Just fill-column, buffer-local, that's it.
>
> >                                                     That would
> > be a useful example.  And users can try it out and see things work.
> >
> > Yes, it is repeating and RTFM, but with a serious code example to excite
> > people to write actual code after the prose.
>
> The interesting challenge is that different people have diverse
> approaches at learning. Covering as much ground as possible
> without exploding in size (which would hinder learning, too)
> is that Herculean task. That's probably why there's more than
> 1 book.

Have thought about that.  Perhaps we can leave the current manual
alone as an advanced reference.  How do others feel about it?

It is good that the challenge is being recognised.  I can see
what I can do from my side. I understand your concern and shall
focus on an abbreviated guide.

> I claim the Emacs folks have done an outstanding job with the
> two manuals and the introduction /on top of/ the whole "live"
> doc (docstrings, ref to source, etc.). The only software projects
> I could name rivalling that doc would be Don Knuth's TeX and
> METAFONT, but they are (one? several?) orders of magnitude less
> complex than Emacs at this point.
>
> Cheers
>  - t
>