Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On May 21, 2018, at 13:11, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

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What I was saying was that in the 80's-90's, ie before computing
became widespread thanks to common access to the internet, books
needed to be self contained.

The Emacs Lisp intro should still be self-contained.

Indeed. But since users are likely to read it inside Emacs, as a PDF or as HTML, linking the document to the Lisp Reference or even, where necessary to the Emacs Manual, would provide the learner with a better experience than the current state of the introduction (as I wrote in a different mail, the information in the Lisp Reference is more informative than the help strings in the function documentation).

It should not depend on reference to anything across the internet,
since the person reading may not have an internet connection at the
time of coming across the reference.  Wen people are reading printed copies,
the book should not say, "To understand the next section, first read
something else on your computer".

But we should assume that a person who learns Emacs Lisp has access to a machine where Emacs is installed. Thus, providing links to the Lisp Reference or the Emacs Manual should not be an issue.

Jean-Christophe Helary
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http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune