Propose: add developer infos to the manual

Propose: add developer infos to the manual

[Torsten Wagner]

Dear All,

I'm really an org-mode beginner and even more I'm a bloody emacs-lisp 
beginner. Nevertheless, I try to understand here and there who things 
work out and tweak some things here and there. Nothing which might be 
worse to share yet .... but I'm on my way to learn about the internals 
of org-mode.

Normally I start to consult the manual and see if I could achive what I 
am looking for by the given function set of org-mode. If I concern a lot 
I try to dig down threw the source-code for different functions to see 
how they work.
I wonder whether it might be possible to add a footnote to every 
explained function with a link to the source-file.
By this way it would be much easier to find the desired code-lines. 
Maybe bug-fixing will be easier as well. I assume there are many 
org-mode users with solid lisp knowledge who might be able to help 
bug-fixing but who have no idea where to find the necessary code.

I know I can use C-h a in emacs to search for the desired function and 
jump to the lisp code. Just thought some redundancy in the manual might 
help to attract more people to contribute.

Since the manual and the lisp files are plain text, it might be easy to 
write a function which does this automatically?!

Furthermore, after I thought about this I started to wonder whether 
org-mode + babel could be used to literally program org-mode itself. 
This would result in a very nice developer manual and is a very nice 
example to literate programming.

Just some thoughts

Bye

Torsten

Re: Propose: add developer infos to the manual

[Carsten Dominik]

Hi Torsten,

On Mar 4, 2010, at 3:41 AM, Torsten Wagner wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I'm really an org-mode beginner and even more I'm a bloody emacs- 
> lisp beginner. Nevertheless, I try to understand here and there who  
> things work out and tweak some things here and there. Nothing which  
> might be worse to share yet .... but I'm on my way to learn about  
> the internals of org-mode.
>
> Normally I start to consult the manual and see if I could achive  
> what I am looking for by the given function set of org-mode. If I  
> concern a lot I try to dig down threw the source-code for different  
> functions to see how they work.
> I wonder whether it might be possible to add a footnote to every  
> explained function with a link to the source-file.
> By this way it would be much easier to find the desired code-lines.  
> Maybe bug-fixing will be easier as well. I assume there are many org- 
> mode users with solid lisp knowledge who might be able to help bug- 
> fixing but who have no idea where to find the necessary code.
>
> I know I can use C-h a in emacs to search for the desired function  
> and jump to the lisp code. Just thought some redundancy in the  
> manual might help to attract more people to contribute.
>
> Since the manual and the lisp files are plain text, it might be easy  
> to write a function which does this automatically?!

This would not be easy, because the Org-mode manual is written in  
terms of keys and functionality, not in terms of functions.  So the  
manual, most of the times, does not know about which function it is  
talking.

If you are reading the manual in info, the commands find-function and  
find-variable will be shortcust for the process you describe above.

- Carsten

>
> Furthermore, after I thought about this I started to wonder whether  
> org-mode + babel could be used to literally program org-mode itself.  
> This would result in a very nice developer manual and is a very nice  
> example to literate programming.
>
> Just some thoughts
>
> Bye
>
> Torsten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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- Carsten