Re: list of elisp primitives ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Dec 22, 2019, at 13:30, Eduardo Ochs <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Ok...
> 
> I don't think I can help, then...
> 
> I've been teaching Emacs to lots of newbies lately, but my approach is
> exactly the opposite of that - I prefer to suppose that their memory
> is very bad and that they have very little focus, and I start by
> teaching them how to create sexp hyperlinks to everything that they
> find interesting in the info manual, in the elisp source, in manpages,
> in PDFs, and in several other kinds of places... here are four links
> to my approach if you'd like to take a look:

Thank you, that's very interesting.

But I think that's not so different from what I'm looking for. You still need 
to teach learners a few basic skills and for that they do use their memory.

I'm thinking about 20-40 basic functions in elisp.

JC

> 
>    http://angg.twu.net/eev-intros/find-here-links-intro.html
>    http://angg.twu.net/emacsconf2019.html
>    http://angg.twu.net/eev-intros/find-emacs-keys-intro.html
>    http://angg.twu.net/eev-intros/find-eev-quick-intro.html
> 
> [[]],
>   Eduardo Ochs
>   http://angg.twu.net/#eev
> 
> 
> On Sun, 22 Dec 2019 at 01:15, Jean-Christophe Helary <address@hidden> wrote:
> What I'm trying to do is this:
> 
> >  I was thinking that because of the sheer amount of functions in the elisp 
> > reference, it might be much easier to start programming with the primitives 
> > to understand how elisp works at its core, and then climb the ladder when 
> > need arises...
> 
> i.e. trying to find a limited subset of functions that one can use to program 
> in elisp and do non-trivial things but that do not involve searching the 
> reference at all times.
> 
> I'm thinking like in standard learners dictionaries, there are clear 
> indications, like asterisks, that tell the learner whether the word is basic 
> (generally about 2000 words) or intermediate (about 4000 words).
> 
> People who know the basic words can get by and express most of what they need 
> to express in daily life.
> 
> For ex, it is estimated that there are about 140k words in French, but daily 
> use only requires 1k. Let's lower the number of passively known words to 40k, 
> that's 50 functions in Elisp...
> 
> JC
> 
> > On Dec 22, 2019, at 12:52, Eduardo Ochs <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Jean-Christophe,
> > What are you trying to do?
> > If you'd like to discuss by IRC in #emacs at Freenode I'm edrx there...
> >   [[]], E.
> > 
> > 
> > On Sun, 22 Dec 2019 at 00:44, Jean-Christophe Helary <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Thank you Eduardo.
> > 
> > That's 1290 functions...
> > 
> > The reference seems to have 1608 functions and 294 commands, so those 
> > primitives are not even a "useful subset" of emacs lisp functions...
> > 
> > I guess that was a naïve idea. So I'll just have to go through the 
> > reference and try to find myself a minimaly useful subset (which is what 
> > the Intro should be about, btw.)
> > 
> > > On Dec 22, 2019, at 12:21, Eduardo Ochs <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > 
> > > Try this:
> > > 
> > > (defun fboundp-and-subrp (symbol)
> > >   (and (fboundp symbol) (subrp (symbol-function symbol))))
> > > 
> > > (setq my-primitives (apropos-internal "^.*$" 'fboundp-and-subrp))
> > > 
> > > (defun my-describe (symbol) (format "(describe-function '%S)\n" symbol))
> > > 
> > > (insert (mapconcat 'my-describe my-primitives ""))
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On Sun, 22 Dec 2019 at 00:01, Jean-Christophe Helary <address@hidden> 
> > > wrote:
> > > Is there a list of elisp primitive functions defined in C somewhere ?
> > > 
> > > I was thinking that because of the sheer amount of functions in the elisp 
> > > reference, it might be much easier to start programming with the 
> > > primitives to understand how elisp works at its core, and then climb the 
> > > ladder when need arises...
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Jean-Christophe Helary
> > > -----------------------------------------------
> > > http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune