Re: Guile in Emacs

[<christian.lynbech@tieto.com>]

>>>>> "David" == David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

David> Because the language specific manual would have no constructs and
David> no examples using any editor-specific data structures or any
David> editor-specific tasks.

Ah, now I begin to see more clearly what you are talking about (I think).

However, I am not really sure I understand why this is a problem. In the
editing library part of the manual, one could include the necessary
examples of how to express one self in the language related to that
feature. I do not see why, say, the description of `defun' or `loop'
necessarily need to use editing related examples.

The description of the core language will, IMHO, only really make sense
to programmers anyway. Non-programmers will (even today) find some
relevant code snippet, search for the relevant editing function and
apply some patterne matching between the examples there and the code
snippet. I doubt they will be anymore compelled to learn the language
just because examples have an editing focus.

I am also not entirely sure just how closely coupled the current manuals
are to the editing context. If one flips through the first dozen pages
of the emacs lisp introduction, there is nothing related to
editing. Flipping through the control structures chapter in the emacs
lisp reference manual shows a similar pattern. Most of those examples
uses `print'/`princ' rather than `insert'. This is obviously not a
thorough review of all of the manuals, but I am unconvinced that the
current manual could not be separated into a language part and an
editing library part with good effects if need be.

We will anyway have the same problem with Guile, I think. One of the
advantages of Guile is precisely that it is an independent piece of
software on which a future emacs will be based, among other applications
which also uses Guile.

I would expect Guile to have, and to continue to have, its own
manual. Whether this will include (in an integrated way) contents
equivalent to the relevant RxRS standards or just point to them and
focus on documenting the differences/extensions (as some CL
implementation do with the hyperspec) I do not know, but surely it will
be prudent for the Guile manual to be selfcontained and not littered
with examples that only makes sense in an emacs context.

Even though scheme is smaller than CL, and it could very well be that
even Guile is significantly smaller than some CL implementations, I hope
that the emacs maintainers would not opt to *duplicate* the Guile
documentation simply for the sake of being able to provide a version
with a more editing focus.


------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech       | christian #\@ defun #\. dk
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Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - petonic@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)