Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files

Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files

[Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth]

The main Emacs manual and some other ones such as the Org mode manual 
are available as PDF files, I was wondering if the same could be done 
for the other manuals.

Is there a script that can be executed to generate PDFs of the manuals?

Ben

Re: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 10, 2018, at 21:03, Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth <siraben@disroot.org> wrote:
> 
> The main Emacs manual and some other ones such as the Org mode manual are available as PDF files, I was wondering if the same could be done for the other manuals.
> 
> Is there a script that can be executed to generate PDFs of the manuals?

make docs


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files

[Van L]

> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
> 
>> Is there a script that can be executed to generate PDFs of the manuals?
> 
> make docs

Is there a process to footnote release being different to documentation?

For example, emacs 26.1 rc-1:
 `16.9 Loading Files’ mentions ‘split-window-quietly’ and `slowsplit.el’

but both aren’t there.

Re: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Van L <van@scratch.space>
> Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 14:32:36 +1000
> Cc: Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> Is there a process to footnote release being different to documentation?
> 
> For example, emacs 26.1 rc-1:
>  `16.9 Loading Files’ mentions ‘split-window-quietly’ and `slowsplit.el’
> 
> but both aren’t there.

This is in Introduction to Emacs Lisp.  That manual wasn't seriously
reviewed since long ago, perhaps never.  Reports about incorrect and
outdated stuff there are welcome.

That said, I think you may be misinterpreting the text.  It says that
split-window-quietly is part of slowsplit.el, not that it's part of
Emacs.  I indeed didn't find slowsplit.el in the 10 sec I invested
into looking for it on the net, but that doesn't mean it doesn't
exist, and AFAIU doesn't diminish from the point the text in question
tries to make.  The point the text is trying to make is how to load
and customize extensions to Emacs that are not bundled with the
official distribution.  Whether slowsplit.wl exists or not is pretty
much immaterial for that.

Thanks.

Re: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

To update the intro to Emacs Lisp programming would be a very useful
thing to do.  Would somene like to read it, looking mainly for erroneous
statements?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

update intro to Emacs Lisp programming (was: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files)

[Van L]

> Richard Stallman writes:
> 
> To update the intro to Emacs Lisp programming would be a very useful
> thing to do.  Would somene like to read it, looking mainly for erroneous statements?

I’ll.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming (was: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Thank you very much in advance for updating the Lisp intro.  Please
keep us posted.

I expect that the support for lexical scoping will call for some
sort of change to the manual -- though I am not certain.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming (was: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files)

[Van L]

> Richard Stallman writes:
> 
> Thank you very much in advance for updating the Lisp intro.  Please
> keep us posted.

I began to read it in the info pages form and reached page 33 before learning from the previous thread it could be rendered as PDF. The intro is almost 300 pages in full. I had expected 60 pages.

Stopping at page 45 in the PDF (page 61 of 271 in the PDF viewer) and looking back, the word `simple’ was added in 2013 and has not been applied consistently.

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
  * Emacs Lisp Intro: (eintr).    A simple introduction to Emacs Lisp 
				    programming.

  f9405d87 (Glenn Morris             2013-12-11   102) * Emacs Lisp Intro: (eintr).    A simple introduction to Emacs Lisp programming.

  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   172) @center @titlefont{An Introduction to}
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   173) @sp 2
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   174) @center @titlefont{Programming in Emacs Lisp}

  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   206) @top An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp
#+END_EXAMPLE

For others who may want to follow along, I used (vc-annotate) or `C-x v g’ inside:

  emacs/doc/lispintro/emacs-lisp-intro.texi

to locate details in the example section above.

Details about Emac’s version control interface are in chapter 25 of the emacs.pdf created by `make docs’ or in the info pages for Emacs 26.1 rc-1 in `28 Maintaining Large Programs’.

> I expect that the support for lexical scoping will call for some
> sort of change to the manual -- though I am not certain.

For now, I’ll read it carefully and keep an eye out for errorneous statements. Hopefully others will join and a collective 15-minutes everyday from contributors around the world will improve the manual.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Paul Eggert]

On 05/16/2018 05:25 PM, Van L wrote:
> The intro is almost 300 pages in full. I had expected 60 pages.

This is an important point in its own right. Could you write a 
simplified introduction that is only 50 pages or so? That would be 
helpful to many potential users, I'd think.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 17, 2018, at 10:12, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
> 
> On 05/16/2018 05:25 PM, Van L wrote:
>> The intro is almost 300 pages in full. I had expected 60 pages.
> 
> This is an important point in its own right. Could you write a simplified introduction that is only 50 pages or so? That would be helpful to many potential users, I'd think.

The problem with the introduction is that it was written when programming was only starting to be a skill "normal" people could have access to. So the text is extremely verbose and is sometimes hard to follow because of that. The gist of the document could be summarized in 50 pages.


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > The problem with the introduction is that it was written when
  > programming was only starting to be a skill "normal" people could
  > have access to.

This book is intentionally addressed to people who don't know how to
program.  That is its purpose.  We recommend people start learning to
program using this book.

If you DO know how to program in some other language, you can probably
learn Emacs Lisp starting with the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 18, 2018, at 11:33, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>> The problem with the introduction is that it was written when
>> programming was only starting to be a skill "normal" people could
>> have access to.
> 
> This book is intentionally addressed to people who don't know how to
> program.  That is its purpose.  We recommend people start learning to
> program using this book.

I am fully aware of that. Let me restate what I wrote. The book was written at a time when computer where not common and programming was a skill you could only learn from *books*.


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
> 
> Let me restate what I wrote. The book was written at a time when computer where not common and programming was a skill you could only learn from *books*.

Do you have a link to a computer museum to strengthen that claim?

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-18, at 15:39, Van L <van@scratch.space> wrote:

>> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
>>
>> Let me restate what I wrote. The book was written at a time when computer where not common and programming was a skill you could only learn from *books*.
>
> Do you have a link to a computer museum to strengthen that claim?

Apparently, the book was started/written in 1990 (I assume that from the
copyright notice.)

The words "blog" and "web 2.0" were coined in 1999.

Youtube started in 2005.

I guess that should be enough.

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Marcin Borkowski writes:
> 
> Youtube started in 2005.
> 
> I guess that should be enough.

Twitch.tv re-branded in 2011.

Could a massive multi-player code combat game in Emacs Lisp be entertaining? picture swarms of drones at laser tag, a ratio of one programmer to many drones teaming against other players.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 19, 2018, at 9:00, Van L <van@scratch.space> wrote:

> Could a massive multi-player code combat game in Emacs Lisp be entertaining? picture swarms of drones at laser tag, a ratio of one programmer to many drones teaming against other players.

I think it is better to focus on editing the current manual, first for inaccuracies, and then to make it a shorter and more to the point read without changing the structure.


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
> 
> I think it is better to focus on editing the current manual, first for inaccuracies, and then to make it a shorter and more to the point read without changing the structure.

The names on the following piece would write an awesome intro if they’ve the time to spare on interests, such as, learning to program and speculative intuitions about business models and digital super intelligence.

  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/19/business/media/time-inc-oral-history.html

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Apparently, the book was started/written in 1990 (I assume that from the
  > copyright notice.)

The Emacs Manual is even older than that.  So what?

  > The words "blog" and "web 2.0" were coined in 1999.

  > Youtube started in 2005.

This doesn't add up to a coherent argument for a conclusion.
Would you like to try to write a coherent argument for
some conclusion?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-20, at 05:16, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Apparently, the book was started/written in 1990 (I assume that from the
>   > copyright notice.)
>
> The Emacs Manual is even older than that.  So what?
>
>   > The words "blog" and "web 2.0" were coined in 1999.
>
>   > Youtube started in 2005.
>
> This doesn't add up to a coherent argument for a conclusion.
> Would you like to try to write a coherent argument for
> some conclusion?

Let me restate what has been written.

> On 2018-05-18, at 15:39, Van L <van@scratch.space> wrote:
>
>>> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
>>>
>>> Let me restate what I wrote. The book was written at a time when computer where not common and programming was a skill you could only learn from *books*.
>>
>> Do you have a link to a computer museum to strengthen that claim?
>
> Apparently, the book was started/written in 1990 (I assume that from the
> copyright notice.)
>
> The words "blog" and "web 2.0" were coined in 1999.
>
> Youtube started in 2005.
>
> I guess that should be enough.

Argument: the popular ways of learning _now_ are blogs (which are the
thing of "web 2.0", although nobody seems to be using that term now) and
videos (and I think YouTube started the trend of people putting their
videos on the Internet).  The popular way of learning _when Elisp Intro
was written_ was studying books.

Conclusion: Jean-Christophe was right, and we do not need a link to
a computer museum to strengthen that claim.

I thought that was pretty clear.

Hth,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 20, 2018, at 12:38, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:
> 
> The popular way of learning _when Elisp Intro
> was written_ was studying books.

Although the Elisp introduction is a special book, since you can read it in Emacs and evaluate the code it displays right in the buffer.

What I was saying was that in the 80's-90's, ie before computing became widespread thanks to common access to the internet, books needed to be self contained. So there was a lot of redundant contents between books in inside the books. Now, thanks to the availability of all sorts of programming tutorials in all sorts of media, hyperlinking and other niceties, it is much easier to learn about the concepts of computing (variables/loops/conditions/ etc.) and then to try to apply that to any given language, without that knowledge making you a computer programmer.

As a summary to what I wrote earlier, plus some extra:

1) What Richard requested and that is relatively urgent: the Emacs Lisp Introduction should be first checked for factual errors (an expert is needed there),
2) it needs to be edited to trim all the verbosity that is not required anymore (maybe cut 1/3)
3) it needs to be better linked to the Reference because there are code examples in the Reference that you don't  have access to when you check a function docstring. There should be links to the function description in the Reference *and* links to the various chapters.
4) there is a need to add a lot more exercices so that the learner can explore a lot more from what has been explained, possibly exercices that relate to "modern" computing domains
5) the structure needs a bit of dusting too

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> This book is intentionally addressed to people who don't know how to
> program.  That is its purpose.  We recommend people start learning to
> program using this book.

I support this purpose.  Since Emacs is a prime example of the benefits of using free software (view source, share, modify, contribute), it is even better introducing this idea to newcomers to programming so that they may see the value of free software.

This project feels similar to when the SICP book (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a course at MIT that taught Scheme), was overhauled and brought to a more modern form.

The overhauled SICP book is available in Texinfo format (which works inside Emacs).

http://www.neilvandyke.org/sicp-texi/

Alternatively, it was also converted to PDF HTML5 formats, which allows for convenient viewing.
https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pdf

As Richard said, it would be ideal to have the Introduction to Emacs Lisp serve as an introduction to programming.  SICP's first chapter does this job well, however it is quite mathematically oriented and some of the exercises are difficult for new people.

Some of the exercises in SICP are easily ported to Emacs Lisp, and we can omit sections that focus on Scheme specifically, such as the metacircular evaluator, register machines etc.

SICP also lacks "fun" exercises, so we might adapt some from various sources, for instance, the book "Land of Lisp".  Some fun exercises could be creating a number guessing game, a dunnet-like  text adventure, and more.  Small enough to be doable, while giving instant feedback.  Some of the exercises could be directly related to customizing Emacs, such as writing a mode to color text randomly as one types.

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> 4) there is a need to add a lot more exercices so that the learner can explore a lot more from what has been explained, possibly exercices that relate to "modern" computing domains

For some of the more "modern" exercises it would be helpful to adapt some ideas sources such as Practical Common Lisp.  For instance, using record types in Emacs Lisp to create a database of CDs or books.  Incidentally the book attempts to teach a bit of Emacs' keybindings, modes, and file navigation as well, but in a very limited fashion.

Richard Stallman wrote:
> We still need free books to learn programming from.
> This book is the one we have.
> It needs to be checked to see what changes are needed
> to correspond to the current Emacs,

Many programming books fail to properly address the barrier of using code editing tools, and even worse, sometimes recommend non-free programs, whereas this need not happen with the Introduction to Emacs Lisp, since customizing the editor goes with learning the language.  We ultimately should provide the book as a standalone document, and an interactive tutorial in Emacs.

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> 1) What Richard requested and that is relatively urgent: the Emacs Lisp Introduction should be first checked for factual errors (an expert is needed there),

I agree with this.  A larger rewrite will be necessary at some point to make the Introduction to Emacs Lisp more suitable for learning programming, but for now, mistakes (in the code, prose or otherwise) should be fixed swiftly.

-- 
Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth writes:
> 
> Richard Stallman writes:
>> We still need free books to learn programming from.
>> This book is the one we have.
>> It needs to be checked to see what changes are needed
>> to correspond to the current Emacs,
> 
> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
>> 1) What Richard requested and that is relatively urgent: the Emacs Lisp Introduction should be first checked for factual errors (an expert is needed there),
> 
> I agree with this.  A larger rewrite will be necessary at some point to make the Introduction to Emacs Lisp more suitable for learning programming, but for now, mistakes (in the code, prose or otherwise) should be fixed swiftly.

Should a file for emacs/admin/notes/books be created? referencing this thread like how the versioning file is structured.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > As Richard said, it would be ideal to have the Introduction to Emacs Lisp serve as an introduction to programming.  SICP's first chapter does this job well, however it is quite mathematically oriented and some of the exercises are difficult for new people.

SICP teaches a deep understanding of programming, and I recommend it
for people who want to do the work to learn a deep understanding.  But
it is not suitable for non-wizard users that might want to learn a
little programming.

As for adapting material from SICP to the Intro to Emacs Lisp, what
license does SICP carry?  I know it is now free, but this would
require compatibility.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 00:12:23 -0400
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> As for adapting material from SICP to the Intro to Emacs Lisp, what
> license does SICP carry?

MIT, it seems:

  Copyright @copyright{} 1996 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  @copyright{} 1996 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth]

I thought it was under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License[1], which is compatible with the GPLv3 [2].

[1]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html
[2]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/creative-commons-by-sa-4-0-declared-one-way-compatible-with-gnu-gpl-version-3


Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> As for adapting material from SICP to the Intro to Emacs Lisp, what
>> license does SICP carry?
> 
> MIT, it seems:
> 
>    Copyright @copyright{} 1996 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>    @copyright{} 1996 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> 

-- 
Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I thought it was under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
  > International License[1], which is compatible with the GPLv3 [2].

The license of the Intro to Emacs Lisp is the GFDL, right?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> CC: eliz@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 22:15:10 -0400
> 
> The license of the Intro to Emacs Lisp is the GFDL, right?

All of our manuals are under GFDL.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > MIT, it seems:

  >   Copyright @copyright{} 1996 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  >   @copyright{} 1996 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

That says that the copyright on the text belongs to MIT.
It says nothing about which license the text is published under.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > What I was saying was that in the 80's-90's, ie before computing
  > became widespread thanks to common access to the internet, books
  > needed to be self contained.

The Emacs Lisp intro should still be self-contained.

It should not depend on reference to anything across the internet,
since the person reading may not have an internet connection at the
time of coming across the reference.  Wen people are reading printed copies,
the book should not say, "To understand the next section, first read
something else on your computer".

For ethical reasons, we don't cite any nonfree material as
documentation.  We don't refer to anything on Youtube, ever, since
viewing Youtube in a browser entails running nonfree Javascript code
and it is an injustice to suggets people use that.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Richard Stallman writes:
> 
> For ethical reasons, we don't cite any nonfree material as
> documentation.  We don't refer to anything on Youtube, ever, since
> viewing Youtube in a browser entails running nonfree Javascript code
> and it is an injustice to suggets people use that.

Can the exercises to be set equip the reader to eventually explore Harvard Library’s Open Metadata? for example.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Can the exercises to be set equip the reader to eventually explore
  > Harvard Library’s Open Metadata? for example.

Whether it would be good or bad to do that
depends on what's in that library.  The word "open"
makes me worry, as it always does, but I don't really know
any of the pertinent facts.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 21, 2018, at 13:11, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>> What I was saying was that in the 80's-90's, ie before computing
>> became widespread thanks to common access to the internet, books
>> needed to be self contained.
> 
> The Emacs Lisp intro should still be self-contained.

Indeed. But since users are likely to read it inside Emacs, as a PDF or as HTML, linking the document to the Lisp Reference or even, where necessary to the Emacs Manual, would provide the learner with a better experience than the current state of the introduction (as I wrote in a different mail, the information in the Lisp Reference is more informative than the help strings in the function documentation).

> It should not depend on reference to anything across the internet,
> since the person reading may not have an internet connection at the
> time of coming across the reference.  Wen people are reading printed copies,
> the book should not say, "To understand the next section, first read
> something else on your computer".

But we should assume that a person who learns Emacs Lisp has access to a machine where Emacs is installed. Thus, providing links to the Lisp Reference or the Emacs Manual should not be an issue.

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-22, at 13:20, Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com> wrote:

>> On May 21, 2018, at 13:11, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>>
>> The Emacs Lisp intro should still be self-contained.
>
> Indeed. But since users are likely to read it inside Emacs, as a PDF or as HTML, linking the document to the Lisp Reference or even, where necessary to the Emacs Manual, would provide the learner with a better experience than the current state of the introduction (as I wrote in a different mail, the information in the Lisp Reference is more informative than the help strings in the function documentation).
>
>> It should not depend on reference to anything across the internet,
>> since the person reading may not have an internet connection at the
>> time of coming across the reference.  Wen people are reading printed copies,
>> the book should not say, "To understand the next section, first read
>> something else on your computer".
>
> But we should assume that a person who learns Emacs Lisp has access to a machine where Emacs is installed. Thus, providing links to the Lisp Reference or the Emacs Manual should not be an issue.

FWIW, I read some parts of the Elisp Reference on an ebook reader in
public transport.

BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
that could be read after the Intro.  (I even started working on it, and
I have about 250kB of text written.)  The project is now dormant, but
I have a very firm intent to revive it in a few months.  It would
contain a large number of examples of commands to facilitate various
aspects of text editing (and other things), so it would be somehow
similar to the Intro in that respect.

My current plan is to come back to work on this around August, and
I expect that it would take about 6-12 months to complete (depending in
various factors).  Also, I envision that the book would be similar
(possibly slightly larger) to the Intro as far as size is concerned.

Would someone here be interested in something like this?

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Filipp Gunbin]

On 22/05/2018 20:07 +0200, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

> BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
> that could be read after the Intro.  (I even started working on it, and
> I have about 250kB of text written.)  The project is now dormant, but
> I have a very firm intent to revive it in a few months.  It would
> contain a large number of examples of commands to facilitate various
> aspects of text editing (and other things), so it would be somehow
> similar to the Intro in that respect.
>
> My current plan is to come back to work on this around August, and
> I expect that it would take about 6-12 months to complete (depending in
> various factors).  Also, I envision that the book would be similar
> (possibly slightly larger) to the Intro as far as size is concerned.
>
> Would someone here be interested in something like this?

Sure.

What I liked most about the eintro were chapters where some real-world
(at the time of writing), although simplified, functions were discussed.

Filipp.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
  > that could be read after the Intro.

How about adding that mew material as the start of the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-23, at 05:27, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
>   > that could be read after the Intro.
>
> How about adding that mew material as the start of the Emacs Lisp
> Reference Manual?

There are several reasons I don't think this is a good idea.

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> "MB" == Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

>> > BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one >
>> that could be read after the Intro.
>> 
>> How about adding that mew material as the start of the Emacs Lisp Reference
>> Manual?

MB> There are several reasons I don't think this is a good idea.

I have a reason why I disagree with this comment.

;)

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-23, at 16:38, John Wiegley <johnw@gnu.org> wrote:

>>>>>> "MB" == Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>>> > BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one >
>>> that could be read after the Intro.
>>>
>>> How about adding that mew material as the start of the Emacs Lisp Reference
>>> Manual?
>
> MB> There are several reasons I don't think this is a good idea.
>
> I have a reason why I disagree with this comment.
>
> ;)

Understood. ;-)

So, here are my reasons, in no particular order.

- style: The Lisp Reference is more in formal/impersonal style, Eintro
  is much more casual.  So is my writing.  (You can visit my blog at
  mbork.pl to see a sample.)  It won't fit to the Reference.

- ambition: I'd like to have "my" book on Elisp.  It's not only about
  vanity, though - I would like to author more books on various stuff in
  the future, and I'd like this to be part of my track record.  (Note:
  it is not going to be my first book, I coauthored a well-received
  textbook on LaTeX (in Polish) and wrote a textbook about certain part
  of mathematics (https://zbmath.org/?q=an:1362.54001), and I'm in the
  process of writing yet another one.)

- money: I'd like to get some funding for the book.  (I thought about
  crowdfunding it.)  I don't want to become a millionaire thanks to it,
  but it will require considerable time from me, and I am now the sole
  financial supporter of my family, so I have to be quite careful wrt
  where I put my time in.  (In an ideal world, I'd like to have, say
  $8000 to cover all expenses of copyediting, proof-reading, printing
  etc. and my time; in the real world, I think $2000 is a reasonable
  minimum, which would mean this to be, say, a half-charity project.)

  (Note: I am aware that this technically might not exclude rms' idea.)

- policy: While I do appreciate some of rms' and FSF's ideals, I don't
  feel like I can identify with FSF's goals/policies to the extent of
  authoring a big thing with them (as opposed to minor things like bug
  fixes and small Emacs features).

- license: I explicitly do *not* want to release it under GFDL.  One
  possibility would be to have a small print-run of physical copies
  (say, a few hundred at most) and a digital version (pdf and maybe epub
  etc.) which would be sold, but also freely available (e.g. after some
  short time, like a few months).  While nothing is set in stone
  (although I'd really want to have at least some physical copies),
  I consider GFDL a very bad idea in case of (at least partially)
  creative writing (as opposed to purely technical writing, like
  a reference guide).  I thought about e.g. CC-BY-ND, which explicitly
  forbids distributing modified copies.

Does that make more sense?

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

The reasons you stated are personal preferences or characteristics of yours.
They are not reasons why the GNU Project should do this differently.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > >   > BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
  > >   > that could be read after the Intro.
  > >
  > > How about adding that mew material as the start of the Emacs Lisp
  > > Reference Manual?

  > There are several reasons I don't think this is a good idea.

If you present those reasons, the rest of us could think about them
and perhaps be persuaded.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-24, at 04:49, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > >   > BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
>   > >   > that could be read after the Intro.
>   > >
>   > > How about adding that mew material as the start of the Emacs Lisp
>   > > Reference Manual?
>
>   > There are several reasons I don't think this is a good idea.
>
> If you present those reasons, the rest of us could think about them
> and perhaps be persuaded.

I did that in a seprate message yesterday.  Sorry for not doing it right
away - I needed some time to think and write about them.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I did that in a seprate message yesterday.

Yes, I saw it many hours later.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

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() Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
() Tue, 22 May 2018 20:07:11 +0200

   [...] an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
   that could be read after the Intro [...]

   Would someone here be interested in something like this?

I'd be interested.  I was thinking to propose some kind of
collaboration (since i like writing documentation and maybe you
might like another set of hands/eyes on the text), and then saw
your other post where you explain your intention in detail.  If
you'd like to discuss collaboration possibilities, please feel
free to contact me off-list.

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (query)
   (pcase (context query)
     (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml))
     ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-24, at 18:25, Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnu.org> wrote:

> () Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
> () Tue, 22 May 2018 20:07:11 +0200
>
>    [...] an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
>    that could be read after the Intro [...]
>
>    Would someone here be interested in something like this?
>
> I'd be interested.  I was thinking to propose some kind of
> collaboration (since i like writing documentation and maybe you
> might like another set of hands/eyes on the text), and then saw
> your other post where you explain your intention in detail.  If
> you'd like to discuss collaboration possibilities, please feel
> free to contact me off-list.

Hi,

and thanks for your response.  (Frankly, I was a bit disappointed in
general - I counted on some more replies.  And now I don't know whether
the Emacs people found my goals offensive or whether just nobody
cares...)

Definitely, a pair of eyeballs to look for errors/omissions etc. would
be great.  I'll definitely keep that in mind!  Also, I wouldn't mind
some kind of brainstorming about what to include and how to structure
the book.  As for writing itself, I'd prefer to do that myself, for
a few reasons.  One of them is that I've recently made a mistake of
agreeing to coauthor a book with someone whom I didn't know close enough
to know that we share a common vision and (at least some) values, and
the experience turned out to be rather nightmarish...  I am now much
more hesitant to take such a risk again.  I hope that you understand
that I don't want to sound offensive - I just don't know you well enough
to be sure that we would spend more time writing than fighting over what
and how to write;-).  After all, we are just proverbial "strangers on
the internet"...

Plus I'd like the book to have a personal touch (a bit like Elisp Intro
and unlike most technical documentation), and that makes collaboration
much trickier.

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

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() Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
() Wed, 30 May 2018 19:28:42 +0200

   and thanks for your response.  (Frankly, I was a bit
   disappointed in general - I counted on some more replies.
   And now I don't know whether the Emacs people found my goals
   offensive or whether just nobody cares...)

Another possibility is that writing text is much more hairy than
writing programs, and people are wary of doing it on their own,
not to mention w/ another person (as you point out below).

   Definitely, a pair of eyeballs to look for errors/omissions
   etc. would be great.  I'll definitely keep that in mind!

Cool.

   Also, I wouldn't mind some kind of brainstorming about what
   to include and how to structure the book.

Sounds to me like a good posting topic for help-gnu-emacs.  That
list is helpful in many ways and there are a lot of brains, too!

   As for writing itself, I'd prefer to do that myself, for a
   few reasons.  [...]

Fair enough.  I think your approach is wise, especially knowing
my own work style/habits, which are sometimes (many times, most
of the time?) disorganized.

   [...] I just don't know you well enough to be sure that we
   would spend more time writing than fighting over what and how
   to write;-).  After all, we are just proverbial "strangers on
   the internet"...

True.  Although i tend to have a thick skin for technical stuff,
i know my ego can get in the way for subjective matters.

   Plus I'd like the book to have a personal touch (a bit like
   Elisp Intro and unlike most technical documentation), and
   that makes collaboration much trickier.

Personal touch is always the best.  Good luck w/ the writing,
and please feel free to ping me for proofreading tasks.

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (query)               ; (2018) Software Libero
   (pcase (context query)               ;       = Dissenso Etico
     (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml))
     ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> "MB" == Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

MB> and thanks for your response. (Frankly, I was a bit disappointed in
MB> general - I counted on some more replies. And now I don't know whether the
MB> Emacs people found my goals offensive or whether just nobody cares...)

Hi Marcin, I was in Chicago the past week, and am only now getting back to
"messages that need further thought and response". I'll by replying once the
queue is flushed.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-30, at 22:17, John Wiegley <johnw@gnu.org> wrote:

>>>>>> "MB" == Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
> MB> and thanks for your response. (Frankly, I was a bit disappointed in
> MB> general - I counted on some more replies. And now I don't know whether the
> MB> Emacs people found my goals offensive or whether just nobody cares...)
>
> Hi Marcin, I was in Chicago the past week, and am only now getting back to
> "messages that need further thought and response". I'll by replying once the
> queue is flushed.

Thanks, John.

I didn't mean offence to you or to anybody in particular.  Given the
amount of traffic some posts (especiall the ones related to politics)
generate, I was simply surprised mine went under the radar.  (That does
not mean that my goal was to generate artificial traffic, i.e., I was
not trolling!)

Best, and take your time,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Indeed. But since users are likely to read it inside Emacs, as a
  > PDF or as HTML, linking the document to the Lisp Reference or
  > even, where necessary to the Emacs Manual,

I'm in favor of that.  If we do it with Texinfo references, they
will "work" regardless of medium.

But we might want to put these in footnotes, contrary to our usual
practice, so that they don't break the flow.
 
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
> Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 05:38:33 +0200
> Cc: van@scratch.space, brandelune@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> I thought that was pretty clear.

FWIW, that post sounded pretty unclear, if not bizarre, to me as well.

I learned long ago that misunderstandings are abundant in Internet
discussions, and therefore one should never blame the reader nor the
writer for their existence.  One should rather try to clarify the
intent to improve understanding and diminish misunderstandings.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Marcin Borkowski writes:
> 
> blogs (which are the
> thing of "web 2.0", although nobody seems to be using that term now)

Today’s newspaper (owned by Jeff Bezos) uses the term webseries, which is the product of a collaborative effort harnessing experts’ dissimilarities.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Argument: the popular ways of learning _now_ are blogs (which are the
  > thing of "web 2.0", although nobody seems to be using that term now) and
  > videos (and I think YouTube started the trend of people putting their
  > videos on the Internet).

One cannot refute, or consider, a fragmentary argument.  With your
explanation, I see what the argument consists of and what conclusion
it tries to demonstrate.

Thank you.

Here is my response to the argument:

That claim may be true for certain kinds of people, for instance young
people with a technical orientation who do everything by internet.  I
suspect that many of you fit into that category.  Most people do not.

The Emacs Lisp Intro, in particular, is aimed at people who don't
pick things up quickly on the internet.

That said, I would not mind if we offered a video also.  Would someone
like to make one?

As for "blogs", as far as I know that only means a sort of regular
series publication, usually not very long.  How would this manual
differ from an item in a blog?  Only by size?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-21, at 06:10, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Argument: the popular ways of learning _now_ are blogs (which are the
>   > thing of "web 2.0", although nobody seems to be using that term now) and
>   > videos (and I think YouTube started the trend of people putting their
>   > videos on the Internet).
>
> One cannot refute, or consider, a fragmentary argument.  With your
> explanation, I see what the argument consists of and what conclusion
> it tries to demonstrate.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Here is my response to the argument:
>
> That claim may be true for certain kinds of people, for instance young
> people with a technical orientation who do everything by internet.  I
> suspect that many of you fit into that category.  Most people do not.
>
> The Emacs Lisp Intro, in particular, is aimed at people who don't
> pick things up quickly on the internet.
>
> That said, I would not mind if we offered a video also.  Would someone
> like to make one?

Not me.  (And BTW, I don't like learning from videos that much.)

> As for "blogs", as far as I know that only means a sort of regular
> series publication, usually not very long.  How would this manual
> differ from an item in a blog?  Only by size?

I would say that blog posts are much smaller and usually
self-contained.  But that is not very precise anyway.

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Marcin Borkowski writes:
> 
> I would say that blog posts are much smaller and usually
> self-contained.  But that is not very precise anyway.
A good fit in the mouth for tasting 
a good blog posting is hors d’oeuvre.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 18, 2018, at 22:39, Van L <van@scratch.space> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
>> 
>> Let me restate what I wrote. The book was written at a time when computer where not common and programming was a skill you could only learn from *books*.
> 
> Do you have a link to a computer museum to strengthen that claim?

The book was originally written in 1990 (check copyright) when the internet was mostly not available to people who had a computer for personal use. Documentation then was available in the form of books, that came with the software.



Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I am fully aware of that. Let me restate what I wrote. The book
  > was written at a time when computer where not common and
  > programming was a skill you could only learn from *books*.

We still need free books to learn programming from.
This book is the one we have.
It needs to be checked to see what changes are needed
to correspond to the current Emacs,

If you want to rewrite it totally to do a different job,
do so if you wish.  The result could be useful -- for some
other purpose.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Van L]

> Jean-Christophe Helary writes:
> 
> The problem with the introduction is that it was written when programming was only starting to be a skill "normal" people could have access to. So the text is extremely verbose and is sometimes hard to follow because of that. The gist of the document could be summarized in 50 pages.

This intro compares well relative to Digital Ocean’s intro to Python published more recently.

Lisp has an interesting history and A.I. is a very hot potato topic in the imagination. The intro ranges to robots! I looked for `super’ as in super intelligence. 

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

  d6adf7e7 (Glenn Morris             2012-05-28   882) @node Lisp History
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   883) @unnumberedsec Lisp History
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   884) @cindex Lisp history
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   885) 
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   886) Lisp was first developed in the late 1950s at the Massachusetts
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   887) Institute of Technology for research in artificial intelligence.  The
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   888) great power of the Lisp language makes it superior for other purposes as
  8cda6f8f (Glenn Morris             2007-09-06   889) well, such as writing editor commands and integrated environments.

  d6adf7e7 (Glenn Morris             2012-05-28   899) @node Note for Novices
  d6adf7e7 (Glenn Morris             2012-05-28 11084) @node Building Robots

#+END_EXAMPLE

> Paul Eggert writes:

> Could you write a simplified introduction that is only 50 pages or so? That would be helpful to many potential users, I'd think.

Can we collect a list of 12 ideas in ranked progression from easy to medium, each to be explored to three levels of difficulty for beginner, intermediate, and advanced which would be condensed in 43 pages? I can attempt an intro but I’m not ready, yet. A busy journalist could read the 50-pages by learning one idea per day and towards the end figure out how to send a tip to the newspaper, confidentially, within Emacs Lisp. Just an idea.

Improve the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual with intro sections

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Could we make the Emacs Lisp Referene Manual more suitable
for programmers to learn Emacs Lisp by adding a few introductory
chapters?

That way, programmers would not need to plow through the explanations
in the Intro to Emacs Lisp that all programmers already understand.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Improve the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual with intro sections

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On May 19, 2018, at 12:20, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> Could we make the Emacs Lisp Referene Manual more suitable
> for programmers to learn Emacs Lisp by adding a few introductory
> chapters?

That's an excellent suggestion. One of my best "introduction to Lisp for programmers" is ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham. He manages to give a pretty good idea of what Lisp development looks like with very clear examples and pointers to the CL reference.

Also, one of the things that I think is missing from the Introduction is exercises. There should be much more of them that help the user explore the possibilities of what has been learned. ANSI Common Lisp and SICP are both very good examples of what can be done in that regard.

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: Improve the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual with intro sections

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Also, one of the things that I think is missing from the
  > Introduction is exercises.

I agree this would be a good addition, once we make it correct for
today's Emacs.

One of the reasons it bends over backwards to explain to people
who know absolutely nothing about programming is that
the experience with Multics Emacs (written in Maclisp) around
1980 was that the secretaries that used it learned to write
editing commands with a similar manual.  People were very surprised
by this.

That manual didn't even say it was to teach programming.
It was about "making your own editing commands" or some such thing.
Peoplle speculated that the secretaries would not have tried
if they though it was "programming" because they believed that
programming was very hard and mere secretaries couldn't learn it.
But when they didn't know it was "programming", they tried it
and succeeded.

We don't go to the point of covering up that the topic is programming.
But we want people who think programming is far beyond them
to be able to learn frm this book.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming (was: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Should we post a message in Reddit asking people to help?
That brought in many helpers for checking the Emacs Manual.

True, this is a different kind of job.  We're not looking mainly
for recent little errors here, since there could be big omissions.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming (was: Making Emacs Manuals Available as PDF Files)

[Van L]

> Richard Stallman writes:
> 
> Should we post a message in Reddit asking people to help?

We'd want a good signal to noise ratio.

What about asking people at OpenAI or Deepmind? and grounding practical examples or problem sets in what they are doing?