From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
To: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
Cc: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>, emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Docstrings and manuals, was: Re: bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2016 03:17:54 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <f512760b-0bde-307e-a5f5-d2f0ff0643e6@yandex.ru> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <8737qnc8ep.fsf@gmx.de>
On 04/15/2016 04:23 PM, Michael Albinus wrote:
>> I disagree. The manual is the documentation for the users, to explain
>> in depth, give examples, et cetera. The docstrings and VC's internal
>> documentation have to stand on their own. It would be silly if the
>> difference between `vc-backend' and `vc-responsible-backend' were to
>> only be explained in the manual, but not in the docstrings.
>
> Are we speaking about different manuals? I'm speaking about the ‘GNU
> Emacs Lisp Reference Manual’, and not the ‘GNU Emacs Manual’ (the manual
> dedicated to users).
OK, so the Emacs Lisp Reference is a counter-example. And it contains a
narrative that explains different aspects of Emacs Lisp in a sort-of
seamless fashion, which is great, because there's no good way to do that
with just docstrings.
And then it goes ahead and provides its own versions of descriptions for
functions and variables that are different from the docstrings, and are
often longer, but sometimes shorter (e.g. for `obarray'), and at times
it seems like the only reasons for the existence of the two versions is
to have docstrings in the imperative voice, and the pieces of text in
the manual, in the passive voice.
And then the two versions start to diverge. For instance, the docstring
for `mapatoms' is rather short. The manual entry for it is longer, *and*
it documents that `mapatoms' returns nil. Why would someone put that
piece of information into the manual, but not the docstring, is beyond me.
So, to be clear, I dislike the ambiguity that manuals that try to be
all-encompassing, like this one, create about the main source of
information about each function.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-04-17 0:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 94+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-05-23 23:49 bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision Glenn Morris
2016-03-28 23:28 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-03-29 18:13 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-01 0:36 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-09 19:34 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-09 20:42 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-10 8:00 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-10 16:00 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-10 18:09 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-10 18:58 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-11 6:55 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-13 20:55 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 7:10 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-14 13:53 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 15:26 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-15 0:33 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 13:13 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-14 15:23 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-13 15:14 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-13 20:49 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 7:21 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-14 14:20 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-14 18:31 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-15 0:20 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 13:11 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 0:44 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:27 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 12:33 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:46 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 1:40 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 1:01 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 1:04 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-15 13:23 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 0:17 ` Dmitry Gutov [this message]
2016-04-17 8:49 ` Docstrings and manuals Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 10:50 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 11:16 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 11:42 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 12:19 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 13:12 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 15:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 16:39 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-17 19:39 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 15:12 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 19:59 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 2:30 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-18 12:55 ` Phillip Lord
2016-04-18 15:35 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-04-18 15:47 ` Stefan Monnier
2016-04-18 16:30 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-04-18 18:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-18 19:33 ` Stefan Monnier
2016-04-18 19:39 ` Eli Zaretskii
[not found] ` <<83ziss9sml.fsf@gnu.org>
2016-04-17 15:54 ` Drew Adams
2016-04-17 15:03 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 15:15 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-17 16:23 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-17 20:22 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 2:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-04-18 8:38 ` Richard Stallman
2016-04-18 9:50 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 0:25 ` Richard Stallman
2016-04-19 7:59 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 23:51 ` Richard Stallman
2016-04-17 0:27 ` bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 1:33 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:28 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 12:37 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 12:53 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 12:58 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-18 13:06 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 16:34 ` John Wiegley
2016-04-18 14:55 ` vc-state and unregistered (was: bug#20637: incompatible, undocumented change to vc-working-revision) Michael Albinus
2016-04-18 21:11 ` vc-state and unregistered Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 8:10 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-19 8:21 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-19 8:31 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-19 8:43 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 12:11 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 12:21 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 12:45 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 12:49 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 13:07 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 13:13 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 13:24 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 13:27 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 14:03 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 17:23 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 17:35 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 18:13 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 18:58 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 19:41 ` Michael Albinus
2016-04-24 20:43 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-04-24 13:08 ` Dmitry Gutov
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