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Re: docstrings and elisp reference
From: |
Eli Zaretskii |
Subject: |
Re: docstrings and elisp reference |
Date: |
Thu, 08 Jun 2017 22:14:57 +0300 |
> From: Etienne Prud’homme <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2017 14:10:13 -0400
>
> > What's more, at least the docs it has for Bash and ELisp are exactly
> > the respective Texinfo manuals, with the same text and the same node
> > structure. What is the advantage of using a different browser for the
> > exact same text?
>
> That’s my point. I must confess that the available documentation for
> Elisp has better support now for choosing whether we search for a macro,
> command, function, etc. It used to index every symbols in the same
> entry type (variable entry).
Not sure I understand what is it that you allude to. We always used
different Texinfo commands for different kinds of symbols: @defmac for
macros, @defvar for variables, @defun for functions, "@deffn Command"
for commands, @defspec for special forms, etc.
> Furthermore, we could support much more indexation capabilities given
> the list of supported entry types[1].
If Texinfo lacks some of these, they could easily be added as the
language continues to evolve and being developed. I see no
fundamental problems here, just something to code.
> What I meant was really the uniform search interface it provides. For
> advanced Emacs users, it’s not a problem looking what we want from Emacs
> itself (or Info entries), but for a newcomers, it might look insane.
We _are_ in an Emacs forum, where the Emacs way of doing things is the
"normal" way. And I definitely wouldn't say that the Emacs help
system is "insane" by any measure. E.g., it offers hyperlinks that
everyone is accustomed to.
> People are now used to search engines when looking at documentation.
Did you try giving a list of keywords to the Emacs apropos commands?
That feature was added in Emacs 23, I think.
IOW, Emacs uses search-engine techniques as well, always did. You
cannot find your way through hundreds of pages of manuals without some
reasonably smart indexing and searching facilities.
> > This should be discussed on the Texinfo list, not here. The current
> > Texinfo translator is highly customizable, so it could be that it can
> > be adapted to these needs much better.
>
> Since we were talking about Emacs, I thought this thread was more
> appropriate. I was refferring to the difficulty of porting GNU Emacs
> Lisp documentation to the Dash docset format.
I still feel I don't understand the nature of that difficulty.
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, (continued)
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Jean-Christophe Helary, 2017/06/07
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Chad Brown, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Jean-Christophe Helary, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Eli Zaretskii, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Jean-Christophe Helary, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Chad Brown, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Etienne Prud’homme, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Richard Stallman, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Eli Zaretskii, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Etienne Prud’homme, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference,
Eli Zaretskii <=
- RE: docstrings and elisp reference, Drew Adams, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Etienne Prud’homme, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Jean-Christophe Helary, 2017/06/08
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Richard Stallman, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Etienne Prud’homme, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Eli Zaretskii, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Yuri Khan, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Eli Zaretskii, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Eli Zaretskii, 2017/06/09
- Re: docstrings and elisp reference, Yuri Khan, 2017/06/09