From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?iso-8859-1?Q?Court=E8s?=) Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: [Guile-commits] GNU Guile branch, wip-manual-2, updated. release_1-9-9-85-g0a864be Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:23:01 +0200 Message-ID: <87aat9f5ay.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87tyrhbn13.fsf@gnu.org> <87iq7xpluz.fsf@ossau.uklinux.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1271060605 31493 80.91.229.12 (12 Apr 2010 08:23:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:23:25 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-devel@gnu.org To: Neil Jerram Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Apr 12 10:23:24 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O1EvS-0005l1-W6 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:23:23 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:38926 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O1EvS-0000Y1-2C for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:23:22 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1O1EvJ-0000Um-Fw for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:23:13 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=43302 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O1EvB-0000Gs-VX for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:23:12 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O1EvA-0008NE-2E for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:23:05 -0400 Original-Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr ([192.134.164.83]:6579) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O1Ev9-0008N6-TV for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:23:04 -0400 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.52,189,1270418400"; d="scan'208";a="48733189" Original-Received: from laptop-147-210-128-170.labri.fr (HELO nixey) ([147.210.128.170]) by mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA; 12 Apr 2010 10:23:02 +0200 X-URL: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ X-Revolutionary-Date: 23 Germinal an 218 de la =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9volution?= X-PGP-Key-ID: 0xEA52ECF4 X-PGP-Key: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ludovic.asc X-PGP-Fingerprint: 83C4 F8E5 10A3 3B4C 5BEA D15D 77DD 95E2 EA52 ECF4 X-OS: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu In-Reply-To: <87iq7xpluz.fsf@ossau.uklinux.net> (Neil Jerram's message of "Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:15:16 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:10202 Archived-At: Hello Neil! Neil Jerram writes: > I'm not sure if I raised it on the list, but for a while I was worried > about the manual being so big, and I wasn't sure about how to form its > contents into a coherent narrative - or about the extent to which that > matters. > > My eventual conclusion from that was that what's really important is to > have a good Introduction chapter. If the Introduction does a good > enough job of laying out the Big Picture, I think that effectively > _creates_ the narrative for the whole manual, and the job for the rest > of the manual is simplified to making sure that it is complete and > technically correct (and has pleasant smaller-scale structure, of > course). Indeed, that makes a lot of sense to me. > Hence, that's what I've been focussing on recently in the wip-manual-2 > branch. I'm sure I'm still not getting everything perfect, though, so > please do keep an occasional eye on that branch, and let me know if you > have any developing concerns. I will merge from master regularly so as > not to miss stuff that's added there, and to avoid building up a > conflict backlog. Then, hopefully, at a point in the not too distant > future, the manual in wip-manual-2 will be ready for pulling back into > master, and publishing. Sounds like a nice plan! > > > The trouble is, though, when the ground keeps shifting under one's > feet. Now that multiple language support is really starting to take > off, last night I was thinking that the first sentence "Guile is an > implementation of the Scheme programming language." is probably not the > right first sentence any more... Well, I think it=E2=80=99s still too early to say it=E2=80=99s taking off, = especially since it already took off to a similar extent back in the day, e.g., when you were working on elisp in the 1.6 era. Notably the ES compiler has yet to be fixed, the elisp one isn=E2=80=99t actually used yet, and Brainfuck, well... ;-) Just to say that we should be careful not to make too broad promises, IMO. > Me too, and that reminds me that I need to get in touch with Brian to > discuss a new realistic schedule. Yes. Speaking of this, the =E2=80=9Cstandard library=E2=80=9D section needs to b= e improved, particularly the SXML sections, which look poor to me. Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99.