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RE: Guile Impressions


From: John Fitzgerald
Subject: RE: Guile Impressions
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 16:39:30 +1200

        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Martin Grabmueller [SMTP:address@hidden
        Sent:   May 10, 2001 02:36
        To:     address@hidden
        Cc:     address@hidden
        Subject:        Re: Guile Impressions

        > 
        > Over the last two or so years (since I joined the mailing list),
        > several times people have suggested to write some Introductory
Manual,
        > User's Guide, Cook Book or however you will call it.
        >
        Good introductory material is important, but the Guide I was
thinking of
        goes far beyond that.  It is a repository for expert user's shared
knowledge.

        > 
        > But the problem is: Writing documentation is a hard task, requires
        > much time and is not as rewarding as implementing some nifty new
        > feature to show off with.
        >
        That depends on the individual, but Open Source software tends to
attract
        programmers in preference to technical writers.

        > 
        > I think that the Guile Tutorial and the current Reference Manual
give
        > a good start for using, embedding and extending Guile.  The real
        > problem (for me) seems to be the lack of documentation for the
harder
        > bits when embedding/extending Guile.
        >
        I have now had a quick look at the Guile 1.5 HTML manual which thi
pointed me
        at and it seems much improved over the Guile 1.4 Info one.

        > 
        > There is a IMHO nice description in the Reference Manual
        > about closures.
        >
        I agree that what is now present is much by far the most
understandable description
        I have read.

        > 
        > I never have heard about ``Fluids'' in other languages, but I
think
        > that they are not much more than global variables.  In Guile, they
are
        > thread-local variables.
        >
        I still have some queries about them, though, which the manual
doesn't explain.
         
        > 
        > So I encourage all Guile users to look at the documentation, see
what
        > is missing, send suggestions, fixes, etc. to address@hidden or
        > create tutorial material we can either point people to or include
in
        > the documentation.
        >
        I'd agree with the first, but Guile seems to suffer enough from
disjoint documentation
        already without proliferating and duplicating it.  One central
documentation point
        is a better idea in my opinion.
         




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