Re: redirected 'help' output?

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

[Sorry for not responding earlier.  I'm busy right now and read the
 list kind of randomly.]

Marius Vollmer <address@hidden> writes:

> I prefer these convenience wrappers to be as thin as possible so that
> the programmatic interface is closely related to the convenience
> wrapper.  Maybe we can move most of the guts of `help' to `help-doc'
> and simply export `help-doc' as well?

Sure.  Maybe we should find a better name than help-doc, though...

> > > (It's actually a `syntax', not a macro, which is even worse.)
> > 
> > Given the current macro system, the special form `help' was most
> > easily implemented as an "acro".  Why is this bad?
> 
> I find that acros, which can't be macroexpanded to see what they are
> doing, are harder to understand than macros or procedures.
> Additionally, acros are quite specific to the current evaluator, and
> they might cause trouble when switching to some other evaluator.
> Ordinary macros should carry over painlessly, while acros probably
> pose more problems.

I see.

Mikael