From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
To: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
Cc: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>, emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Docstrings and manuals
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2016 16:12:05 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <149a61a2-d812-5ae1-d969-d4201872e870@yandex.ru> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87y48cctr6.fsf@gmx.de>
On 04/17/2016 03:19 PM, Michael Albinus wrote:
> Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:
>
>> I'm not arguing in favor of leaving mistakes in the manual. But I
>> think it should be strictly a derivative work. I.e. the docstrings
>> must contain the complete information (if maybe presented in a terse
>> fashion), and the manual could rephrase that, only to make it more
>> accessible (but not more informative).
>
> I still don't understand what problem you discuss. There are docstrings,
> and there are manuals. Both have their reasons to exist.
My problem is that you stated the lack of a manual as the reason for
your lack of understanding of VC's internals. I'm saying the problem is
them being documented insufficiently in the code. And, like I mentioned,
if you go ahead and write the newfound revelations in the manual, but
not anywhere else, a certain slice of developers is going to miss out.
To expand on my message in
http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=20637#91, an example:
If we make a decision that vc-BACKEND-state can rely on FILE not having
state `unregistered' (I'm not saying we should; it's just one option),
that information should go into the Commentary at the top of vc.el
(probably into the description of the `state' command), but...
> I believe it would be good if vc-* functions are covered in a
> manual. What is the problem with this?
...if it also finds its way into a manual later, I don't see any harm.
To put a different spin on my statement earlier: if neither the
docstrings, nor the manual are considered the Single Source of Truth, to
read a reasonably complete description of a function, I'd have to read
both the docstring and the manual. And that's just wasteful.
And even the personal preferences aside, we can't make the manual to be
the SSOT because most functions are not documented there.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-04-17 13:12 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 94+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-05-23 23:49 bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision Glenn Morris
2016-03-28 23:28 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-03-29 18:13 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-01 0:36 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-09 19:34 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-09 20:42 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-10 8:00 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-10 16:00 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-10 18:09 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-10 18:58 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-11 6:55 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-13 20:55 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 7:10 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-14 13:53 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 15:26 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-15 0:33 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 13:13 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-14 15:23 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-13 15:14 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-13 20:49 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 7:21 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-14 14:20 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 18:31 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-15 0:20 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 13:11 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 0:44 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:27 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 12:33 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:46 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 1:40 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 1:01 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 1:04 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 13:23 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 0:17 ` Docstrings and manuals, was: " Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 8:49 ` Docstrings and manuals Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 10:50 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 11:16 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 11:42 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 12:19 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 13:12 ` Dmitry Gutov [this message]
2016-04-17 15:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 16:39 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 19:39 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 15:12 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 19:59 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 2:30 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-18 12:55 ` Phillip Lord
2016-04-18 15:35 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-04-18 15:47 ` Stefan Monnier
2016-04-18 16:30 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-04-18 18:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-18 19:33 ` Stefan Monnier
2016-04-18 19:39 ` Eli Zaretskii
[not found] ` <<83ziss9sml.fsf@gnu.org>
2016-04-17 15:54 ` Drew Adams
2016-04-17 15:03 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 15:15 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 16:23 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 20:22 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 2:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-18 8:38 ` Richard Stallman
2016-04-18 9:50 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 0:25 ` Richard Stallman
2016-04-19 7:59 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 23:51 ` Richard Stallman
2016-04-17 0:27 ` bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 1:33 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:28 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 12:37 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:53 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 12:58 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 13:06 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 16:34 ` John Wiegley
2016-04-18 14:55 ` vc-state and unregistered (was: bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision) Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 21:11 ` vc-state and unregistered Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 8:10 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-19 8:21 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 8:31 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-19 8:43 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 12:11 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 12:21 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 12:45 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 12:49 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 13:07 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 13:13 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 13:24 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 13:27 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 14:03 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 17:23 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 17:35 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 18:13 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 18:58 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 19:41 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 20:43 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 13:08 ` Dmitry Gutov
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=149a61a2-d812-5ae1-d969-d4201872e870@yandex.ru \
--to=dgutov@yandex.ru \
--cc=emacs-devel@gnu.org \
--cc=michael.albinus@gmx.de \
--cc=rgm@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.