Re: Opaque objects and Emacs documentation

[Gregory Heytings]

> > Of course I did.  But as it happens, this difference does not exist in 
> > Emacs.  Remember that one of the direct inspirations of Emacs were Lisp 
> > machines, in which the user can read and modify almost every piece of 
> > code on the fly, from the lowest to the highest level.  In such a 
> > system, there can be no difference between "internal" and "external" 
> > documentation.
>
> Why not?

I have no intention to start another thread / dispute with you.  I merely 
tried to provide you with some elements that explain why things are as 
they are.

> Given that Lisp allows one to expect any value, and jump to any 
> implementation, and debug any function, I would say that actually 
> _lowers_ the need to document things, in general, not the other way 
> around, like in environments which you can't inspect and thus have to 
> rely solely on documentation.

That's your opinion, these are not facts.  The fact that Emacs's code is 
both readable by every Emacs user *and* extremely well documented, and 
that for many closed source programs the contrary holds for both points, 
shows that your opinion does not make sense.  Moreover the immediate 
consequence of your opinion would be that the many people who have spent 
an enormous amount of time to document Emacs as carefully is possible, and 
who knew very well that the code was just there, were all mistaken and 
have wasted their time.  The fact that Emacs is still there after so many 
years shows that they have not.

Gregory