From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: INSTALL file. Comments. Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:23:35 +1000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <87hcm3exo8.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1189417229 15095 80.91.229.12 (10 Sep 2007 09:40:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:40:29 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Sep 10 19:40:15 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IUmLB-000240-9Y for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:42:25 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IUeqo-00033i-QN for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 10 Sep 2007 04:42:34 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!sn-xt-sjc-02!sn-xt-sjc-09!sn-xt-sjc-06!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:fk5jFh/D0klFgd4awovy71HGgKs= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 63 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:151920 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:47429 Archived-At: "Dave Pawson" writes: > To take proper advantage of Emacs 21's mule-unicode charsets, > This in the 22.1 version of emacs INSTALL file. > OK, thats not very helpful. It would seem the INSTALL file needs more work to update it to emacs 22. Possibly worth a report to emacs-devel, or maybe even the submission of a new or additional document. A significant problem with open source is that developers are seldom interested in writing documentation and often, when they do, its not that good. The problem is that writing good documentation requires skill and practice - just because your good at writing code doesn't mean your good at writing documentation. There is a school of thought that argues that developers are precisely the wrong people to write documentation because they are too close to the system and have a familiarity which makes it difficult to know/understand what others who don't have that familiarity will find difficult. I do think a few of your comments are misplaced/misdirected. For one thing, you won't find any mention of deb or any other package system and nor should you. The INSTALL docs in a source tree have to be distribution neutral - there are too many different distros out there to be covered and they change too often. There also has to be a certain level of assumed knowledge. It could be argued that the current level is too high (I personally don't think so), but there is a need for some assumed knowledge. building form sources is not for the faint of hart and it is the responsability of the person trying to build from source to know their distribution and its package management system. I also think there is an obligation to be familiar with the basic tools (make, configure, autoconf etc) and the process. (configuring, compiling, linking etc). If the documentation tried to cover all of this, its unlikely anyone would read it because it would just be too vast (plus it would be impossible to keep up to date). Given where you have come from and the freshness of your experience trying to build from sources, I would *strongly* recommend you write a BEGINNERS file and submit it to the emacs devel team for inclusion in the source distribution. This would be a valuable contribution which could help others in your position and a lot more valuable than posts to a newsgroup or another webpage. It is likely you will be required to revise it a number of times before it will be accepted, but if you can sustain the effort, it could be very useful. You could even put the initial draft up on the emacs wiki - maybe others will then contribute. I would suggest avoiding a step by step guide as this is likely to get out of date very fast. What would probably be more useful would be explinations and pointers to more background information that a beginner could use to 'get up to speed' and make more out of the INSTALL file. If you don't have the time/energy, I would still strongly encourage you to send a post to the devel group with details of parts of the INSTALL file which no longer seem relevant or appear to be only relevant to emacs 21 or which are a bit confusing. This is the area emacs needs help, but it needs to be more than just pointing out the bits that are wrong/outdated. Try to provide alternatives and corrections - this will make it more likely that some/all will actually get into the file. Just pointing out what is wrong/outdated is probably of no real help - the devel team probably already knows about it, but lacks the resources to fix it. Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au