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Re: module documentation draft


From: Philipp Stephani
Subject: Re: module documentation draft
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2017 21:06:29 +0000



Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> schrieb am Fr., 29. Sep. 2017 um 23:03 Uhr:
> From: Philipp Stephani <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 20:39:15 +0000
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
>
>  I already read this, when this was first announced in April.
>  Unfortunately, the style and the methodology of the description
>  differs significantly from what we use in the ELisp manual. So this
>  text will have to be reworked, and I didn't yet find time to do it.
>
> As said, I'd like to get feedback about the *content*. Changing the *style* is easier and requires less
> discussion.

I said "style and methodology", and we seem to disagree about what is
and isn't "style".  My "style" is part of your "content".

This is again mostly wordsmithing, but what you call out below (ordering of sections, where to put definitions) is definitely part of what I'd call "style".
 

> What exactly would you want to have changed to turn it into "reference style"?

It's hard to explain without doing the actual work.

It's equally hard to do the work without knowing what work there is to do :-)
 
  For starters, it
is too formal:

Point taken, though the formality is to a certain extent intentional: the goal of a reference manual is to describe as clearly and exhaustively as possible the entire interface of the system. This requires a certain amount of formality, otherwise the description easily becomes unclear.
 
begins by introducing all the terms, even if that's far
from where they are actually needed in the description;

I'm OK with moving the definitions around, as long as terms are defined before they are used.
 
talks about
requirements before describing the interesting stuff;

The requirements *is* the interesting stuff. What comes later (the description of the specific environment functions) is rather plain and has much fewer pitfalls.
 
etc.  Then the
order of the sections doesn't always make sense to me: for example,
"Compatibility" should be somewhere near the end. 

I'm not against some reordering, but again, the requirements described in the "Compatibility" section are more important than the specific details about the environment functions. If we put such important requirements at the end, module authors will likely skip them, leading to brittle modules that fail in weird ways.
 

Doesn't reading a typical chapter in the ELisp manual, such as "Hash
Tables" or "Processes", make the differences clear?

Not really. On a high level, these sections follow a similar structure: first they give some general overview and provide definitions, then a list of functions with specific explanation follows, grouped by topic.
 

Or let me turn the table and ask you: do you think that text is fit
for putting it as-is into the ELisp manual?

Well, from my point of view the text is almost perfect (since I wrote it), but I guess that's not really helpful ;-)
I would probably trim down some of the examples or the "History" section, because they are probably not very interesting for a reference manual.

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