Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre - 1981-ish version

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>   >     Richard> Perhaps we should make a page and a canned response, "Check the Emacs
>   >     Richard> manuals before you believe what other people's web site say about
>   >     Richard> Emacs."  And publicize that in lots of ways.
>
>   > These are not "other people's web sites", theyʼre the Emacs manuals on
>   > gnu.org, just for a different version of Emacs from the one the user
>   > is running.
>
> That is unfortunate.  Does anyone have a concrete idea for how we could
> improve this?

AFAICT, we provide only one version of the manual on gnu.org.  Maybe we
should have a copy for each version, with pointers between them.  That
way, a user could still be reading the wrong manual, but at least has a
chance to notice the mistake.

For example, Python does a good job at that: https://docs.python.org/3/

Another idea would be to add a brief note to the top of every page along
the lines of: "This is the web version of the GNU Emacs manual for
version 27.1.  It may or may not correspond to the version of Emacs you
have installed.  You can always read the manual in Emacs with the
command C-h i (press CTRL-h and then i)."

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas