Re: About `<prefix>--' (was Re: filenotify.el)

[Josh]

On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:
> The downside of this is that it would require documenting all these
> functions in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, which is already
> unwieldy.

What does "unwieldy" mean in the context of an easily searchable and
navigable hypertext resource like the elisp manual?

> It might be better for people to reinvent these as needed.
> Or put them in a separate category with the prefix `aux-' and document
> them in a different manual.

People are already reinventing such functions in large numbers today,
but I believe this is frequently not "as needed" but because we
wrongly believe it doesn't exist yet after failing to find evidence
to the contrary in the documentation and/or source code where it
would logically appear if it did.  It seems to me that prefixing some
set of functions (which ones?) with "aux-" and documenting them in a
separate manual could only exacerbate this problem.