From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: florian@fsavigny.de (Florian v. Savigny) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Generating a listing of all symbols (16K+) and labeling subsets Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:40:44 +0200 Message-ID: <874n1klchv.fsf@bertrandrussell.Speedport_W_723V_1_32_000> References: <38d1beb3-fffd-4718-ae10-be9646ac4a63@googlegroups.com> <51a18e1e-5537-466a-afcc-baa34235d5a6@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1398238882 11167 80.91.229.3 (23 Apr 2014 07:41:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 07:41:22 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Hans BKK Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Apr 23 09:41:15 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Wcrnu-0004Ll-0t for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:41:14 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59069 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Wcrnt-0003c5-Dk for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 23 Apr 2014 03:41:13 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:59522) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Wcrnb-0003OK-As for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Apr 2014 03:41:02 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WcrnT-00060U-Qu for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Apr 2014 03:40:55 -0400 Original-Received: from srv4.ns-domain-hosting.de ([178.63.89.203]:36660) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WcrnT-00060M-I6 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Apr 2014 03:40:47 -0400 X-No-Relay: not in my network X-No-Relay: not in my network Original-Received: from bertrandrussell.Speedport_W_723V_1_32_000 (p548BE89D.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.139.232.157]) by srv4.ns-domain-hosting.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 14C8618641B; Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:40:46 +0200 (CEST) In-reply-to: <51a18e1e-5537-466a-afcc-baa34235d5a6@googlegroups.com> (message from Hans BKK on Tue, 22 Apr 2014 21:11:36 -0700 (PDT)) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 178.63.89.203 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:97323 Archived-At: > Exploring the code and resulting output has been a decent learning ex= ercise in its own right. I thought so. Even if -- worst case -- you end up saying that your work has not been useful /at all/, you should have learned a good deal about what symbols are, which is useful knowledge when you program in elisp. (Efficiency, of course, is another matter.) I think a lot of unorthodox approaches do not succeed, but if you do have the time, there is nothing to suggest that there is no value in trying them out. I could imagine that much of the veteran response is due to the entirely natural and inevitable fact that the more experienced you get, the older you necessarily get, and the older you get, the less time you want to waste. (And, of course, the better you know how not to waste it.) IOW, usefulness and efficiency are naturally developing criteria. But they are not, as you have suggested, part of a dogma. > Any and all feedback welcome. OK, I'll take that literally, because I am not sure I have completely understood the purpose of your package: If you have icicle-mode, apparently, list-hh-symbols fails: "Symbol's function definition is void: cycle-icicle-image-file-thumbnail"= . Thus, I have tried your function with emacs -q --no-site-file, and got a buffer of some 100K lines. I understand your intention is to diff it, rather than browse it with your eyes, but then it would seem to me the docstrings are not of much value, as I should think customisation would not normally change them. Also, is it practical to order them alphabetically, rather than, say, by file from which they were loaded? As has been mentioned elsewhere, most packages are "namespaced" by prefixing all their symbols with a unique ID -- which should keep the symbols from one package together in an alphabetical listing -- but that is not true for all of them (I seem to recall some very fundamental ones.) Are you intending to enable different kinds of listings? Scoping and different kinds of ordering would seem important to me to make such "reports" manageable. What about customisations that advise existing functions, or even redefine them? > Will likely kill the final "(t / leftovers / other (misc) symbol" > bucket if it's true changes in that category are unlikely to be of > interest. Whatever, there are a lot of "other (misc) symbol" entries all through the listing, which do not at all look informative to me. (And a lot of which, frankly, amaze me. But this is probably due to my limited understanding of Elisp.) But who knows. Maybe it is sometimes informative to simply know whether a symbol exists or not. The challenge for you is to test your function in real life, and demonstrate inhowfar it helps you to understand some given customisation. Icicle-mode, for one, is a customisation that seems impressive, but at the same time changes a lot of behaviour I was used to. ;-) --=20 Florian von Savigny Melanchthonstr. 41 33615 Bielefeld