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From: kyle@xanth.UUCP (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Improvement Suggestion for Gnu Emacs online documentation
Message-ID: <2088@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Aug-87 03:09:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.2088
Posted: Thu Aug 13 03:09:08 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Aug-87 07:47:50 EDT
References: <555402466/gentzel@morgul.psc.edu>
Lines: 12
Summary: use the force

All the online documentation improvements discussed so far seem to be to aid
the Emacs-Lisp programmer.  However, the online documentation is more often
used by the people who don't want to program in Elisp but do need to know what
a function does.  Having things like &optional appear is going to confuse the
daylights out of these people.

Since the argument order and function discipline can be conveyed easily
without exposing esoteric constructs like &optional, &rest, etc. to the
uninitiated, this seems the best way to go.  Emacs-Lisp programmers can always
"use the force" and look at the source for most of the information needed.

kyle jones   <kyle@odu.edu>   old dominion university, norfolk, va