Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1603 bytes --]



> 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



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3444 bytes --]