bug#29804: 27.0; Unclear NEWS item: pointer instead of integer

bug#29804: 27.0; Unclear NEWS item: pointer instead of integer

[Drew Adams]

I don't understand this item at all.  It seems to be the wording that is
a problem, starting with the second line.

** Emacs now normally uses a pointer type instead of an integer type
for the fundamental word in the Emacs Lisp interpreter, to help
catch typos and support -fcheck-pointer-bounds.  The 'configure'
option --enable-check-lisp-object-type is therefore no longer as
useful and so is no longer enabled by default in developer builds,
to reduce differences between developer and production builds.


In GNU Emacs 27.0.50 (build 4, x86_64-w64-mingw32)
 of 2017-12-21
Repository revision: b1cf262a79463f28164ea1c2ffee3c657ce02ea4
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --without-dbus --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32
 --without-compress-install -C 'CFLAGS=-O2 -static -g3'
 host_alias=x86_64-w64-mingw32 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig'

bug#29804: 27.0; Unclear NEWS item: pointer instead of integer

[Paul Eggert]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 107 bytes --]

Thanks, I installed the attached, which I hope is clear enough now, and am 
boldly closing the bug report.

[-- Attachment #2: 0001-etc-NEWS-Improve-fcheck-pointer-bounds-wording.patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-patch, Size: 1150 bytes --]

From 973d10a34b23f2ce5acc00a90ec9767e6237fefa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2018 01:44:58 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] * etc/NEWS: Improve -fcheck-pointer-bounds wording.

---
 etc/NEWS | 5 +++--
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index dd907ab..3ba95c1 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -38,8 +38,9 @@ interpreter or modules that it uses.  If your platform supports it you
 can enable it when configuring, e.g., './configure CFLAGS="-g3 -O2
 -mmpx -fcheck-pointer-bounds"' on Intel MPX platforms.
 
-** Emacs now normally uses a pointer type instead of an integer type
-for the fundamental word in the Emacs Lisp interpreter, to help
+** Emacs now normally uses a C pointer type instead of a C integer
+type to implement Lisp_Object, which is the fundamental machine word
+type internal to the Emacs Lisp interpreter.  This change aims to
 catch typos and support -fcheck-pointer-bounds.  The 'configure'
 option --enable-check-lisp-object-type is therefore no longer as
 useful and so is no longer enabled by default in developer builds,
-- 
2.7.4