Updating manuals

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

Having invested now 5 days in updating the ELisp manual, I'm quite
sure we should request that each code contribution be accompanied with
some meaningful documentation, even if it's not valid Texinfo.  The
amount of research that is needed to convert a short and at times
cryptic NEWS entry into a decent manual style description, and while
at that find and fix all the inaccuracies in the related doc strings,
is simply overwhelming.  The person who writes the code in the first
place is in a much better position to describe that, especially around
the time the code is written.  By contrast, fixing English and the
Texinfo markup is a rather mechanical job that takes much less effort.
Therefore not being a native English speaker should not be an excuse
for not writing documentation to go with the code.

Judging by the rather small progress I made during these 5 days (30
NEWS entries, with about 120 entries more remaining, including those
describing internationalization and multi-tty, which will require a
_really_ serious effort), I am now quite sure we are in trouble with
the prospective schedule of the pretest and release, unless much more
people will come on board to work on updating the manuals.  (I could
only invest this many hours because it's a public holiday down here,
and it's almost over.)