From: Jeff Clough <jeff@chaosphere.com>
To: <christian.lynbech@tieto.com>
Cc: 'David Kastrup' <dak@gnu.org>, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>,
"emacs-devel@gnu.org" <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Guile in Emacs
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:54:02 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <m3aat4vn2d.fsf@logrus.localdomain> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ytqp39ywanjm.fsf@tieto.com> (christian lynbech's message of "Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:49:17 +0200")
<christian.lynbech@tieto.com> writes:
> Jeff> It is also important for that information to be available in one place.
>
> I agree that Emacs should come with all relevant documentation bundled
> up as part of the package, but I can not see that this is the same as
> everything necessarily has to sit inside (the moral equivalent of) one
> single gigantic texinfo file.
Neither do I, but what we have today works. That's what I'm for. Don't
fix what isn't broken. Or, more appropriately, don't fix what Emacs
seems to be the only application to do *right*.
For Emacs itself, there are exactly four places, organized by context,
someone has to look to find the information they need.
1. The Emacs Manual - How to use Emacs as an editor. The only Lisp
found here is for basic, simple configuration. This is for people that
don't want to learn Lisp, they just want to use Emacs as an editor, run
macros, dired, etc.
2. The Emacs Lisp Intro - Teaches the basics of Emacs Lisp. How to use
defadvice, creating a simple major mode, etc. This is for people just
getting started, or who want to know only how to write a simple function
to accomplish some task this afternoon.
3. The Emacs Lisp Reference - Describes every function, macro and
language construct with a few explainations. There may be more
information to be had about a particular thing, but it at least lists
all things with *some* amount of description. This is for people
seriously interested in the language who want to browse for
ideas/knowledge, read something away from their computer or copy a quick
"toy" example (if available) and make it work for them right now.
4. The online documentation/what you get from describe-function and
it's kin - The definitive reference to every symbol you can throw at
Emacs. Assumed to be up-to-date and accurate. This is for people
knee-deep in code right now that can't remember what the third argument
of the function at point needs to be, or can't remember if what they
want is insert-file-contents or insert-file-contents-literally.
All four of these sources have their proper use, and none of them could
be used to duplicate exactly the purpose of any other. And it covers
all of the contexts you'd want documentation (IMHO) well, in a minimum
number of places.
> There will need to be easy acces to the reference just as we get today
> easily can get from the documentation of a function to its source
> definition and there should probably be some top-level entry points with
> proper reading guidance just as the editing library manual should of
> course link to the language manual where relevant.
I think having cross references between the four sources described above
is a great thing. There should be more of that today.
Jeff
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-04-15 13:54 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 127+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <4B8147A9.7030504@gmail.com>
[not found] ` <87ljemdzxo.fsf@stupidchicken.com>
2010-02-23 5:31 ` Next pretest, and branching plans Jason Rumney
2010-02-23 18:29 ` Eli Zaretskii
2010-02-23 21:12 ` Jason Rumney
2010-02-24 6:04 ` Richard Stallman
2010-02-24 13:34 ` Sean Sieger
2010-02-24 15:05 ` Davis Herring
2010-02-24 15:18 ` Sean Sieger
2010-02-24 14:05 ` Chong Yidong
2010-02-25 14:26 ` Richard Stallman
2010-02-26 18:03 ` manuals [was Re: Next pretest, and branching plans] Glenn Morris
2010-02-27 2:32 ` Richard Stallman
2010-02-27 16:52 ` Next pretest, and branching plans Johan Bockgård
2010-03-03 3:52 ` Glenn Morris
2010-03-05 0:31 ` Johan Bockgård
2010-03-05 19:50 ` integer overflow [was Re: Next pretest, and branching plans] Glenn Morris
2010-03-05 22:35 ` integer overflow Stefan Monnier
2010-03-06 2:55 ` Glenn Morris
2010-03-06 3:11 ` Chong Yidong
2010-03-06 7:03 ` Helmut Eller
2010-03-06 15:45 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-03-06 16:23 ` Davis Herring
2010-03-06 16:33 ` Drew Adams
2010-03-07 7:52 ` Richard Stallman
2010-03-07 16:06 ` David Kastrup
2010-03-07 17:18 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-03-07 17:42 ` David Kastrup
2010-03-08 4:49 ` Jay Belanger
2010-03-08 8:04 ` Richard Stallman
2010-03-08 14:41 ` Guile in Emacs (was: integer overflow) Ted Zlatanov
2010-03-08 17:32 ` Guile in Emacs Ted Zlatanov
2010-03-08 18:42 ` Guile in Emacs (was: integer overflow) Chad Brown
2010-03-09 7:07 ` Ken Raeburn
2010-03-09 16:22 ` Guile in Emacs Ted Zlatanov
2010-03-10 8:07 ` Ken Raeburn
2010-03-10 13:58 ` David Kastrup
2010-03-09 3:19 ` Guile in Emacs (was: integer overflow) Richard Stallman
2010-04-11 23:33 ` Thomas Lord
2010-04-12 12:30 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-12 20:05 ` Thomas Lord
2010-04-13 12:44 ` Guile in Emacs Bruce Stephens
2010-04-13 15:51 ` Thomas Lord
2010-04-13 16:07 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-04-13 18:56 ` Thomas Lord
2010-04-13 19:22 ` Christian Lynbech
2010-04-14 10:14 ` Bruce Stephens
2010-04-14 14:10 ` joakim
2010-04-13 19:13 ` Christian Lynbech
2010-04-14 1:47 ` Thomas Lord
2010-04-14 3:33 ` Christian Lynbech
2010-04-14 23:33 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-14 5:02 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-14 6:45 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-14 19:07 ` Thomas Lord
2010-04-14 19:34 ` Bruce Stephens
2010-04-14 20:09 ` Jose A. Ortega Ruiz
2010-04-15 7:34 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-14 23:33 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-15 3:52 ` Drew Adams
2010-04-15 6:01 ` David Kastrup
2010-04-15 6:54 ` Drew Adams
2010-04-15 11:59 ` Jeff Clough
2010-04-15 12:49 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-15 13:54 ` Jeff Clough [this message]
2010-04-15 14:03 ` Lennart Borgman
2010-04-15 16:13 ` Drew Adams
2010-04-16 13:48 ` Jeff Clough
2010-04-16 14:03 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-16 14:25 ` Jeff Clough
2010-04-16 14:25 ` Drew Adams
2010-04-16 14:39 ` David Kastrup
2010-04-16 14:40 ` Jeff Clough
2010-04-16 8:27 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-17 4:41 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-19 7:52 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-16 22:29 ` Emacs Info manuals (was: Guile in Emacs) Juri Linkov
2010-04-15 16:11 ` Guile in Emacs Drew Adams
2010-04-15 7:21 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-15 7:36 ` David Kastrup
2010-04-15 8:34 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-15 9:06 ` David Kastrup
2010-04-15 9:45 ` Helmut Eller
2010-04-15 10:39 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-15 18:47 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-15 22:42 ` Harald Hanche-Olsen
2010-04-15 22:50 ` Harald Hanche-Olsen
2010-04-17 4:40 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-15 23:02 ` Helmut Eller
2010-04-17 4:40 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-17 6:46 ` Helmut Eller
2010-04-17 19:55 ` Richard Stallman
2010-04-14 13:30 ` John Wiegley
2010-04-14 14:18 ` Helmut Eller
2010-04-14 15:40 ` Tom Tromey
2010-04-14 7:51 ` David Kastrup
2010-04-14 8:42 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-14 9:55 ` immanuel litzroth
2010-04-14 10:28 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-14 11:25 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-04-14 12:26 ` christian.lynbech
2010-04-14 16:49 ` Ken Raeburn
2010-04-14 18:29 ` Tom Tromey
2010-04-14 20:02 ` Ken Raeburn
2010-04-14 11:23 ` Jeff Clough
2010-04-14 13:11 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2010-04-14 13:11 ` Stephen Eilert
2010-04-14 13:49 ` Helmut Eller
2010-04-14 15:47 ` Tom Tromey
2010-04-14 16:41 ` Drew Adams
2010-04-14 20:10 ` David De La Harpe Golden
2010-04-15 10:38 ` Leo
2010-03-06 19:04 ` integer overflow Helmut Eller
2010-03-06 21:26 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-03-07 7:51 ` Richard Stallman
2010-03-07 19:05 ` Johan Bockgård
2010-03-06 20:35 ` Chong Yidong
2010-03-13 3:10 ` Next pretest, and branching plans Christoph
2010-03-13 7:42 ` Eli Zaretskii
2010-03-13 14:54 ` Christoph
2010-03-13 18:30 ` Stefan Monnier
2010-03-13 19:06 ` Eli Zaretskii
2010-03-14 2:38 ` Jason Rumney
2010-03-14 2:50 ` Christoph
2010-03-14 3:07 ` Jason Rumney
2010-03-14 17:55 ` Eli Zaretskii
2010-03-17 0:29 ` Christoph
2010-03-17 4:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2010-03-17 12:44 ` Jason Rumney
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