Re: update intro to Emacs Lisp programming

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-22, at 13:20, Jean-Christophe Helary <address@hidden> wrote:

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

FWIW, I read some parts of the Elisp Reference on an ebook reader in
public transport.

BTW, I once had an idea to write a "next step" book on Emacs Lisp, one
that could be read after the Intro.  (I even started working on it, and
I have about 250kB of text written.)  The project is now dormant, but
I have a very firm intent to revive it in a few months.  It would
contain a large number of examples of commands to facilitate various
aspects of text editing (and other things), so it would be somehow
similar to the Intro in that respect.

My current plan is to come back to work on this around August, and
I expect that it would take about 6-12 months to complete (depending in
various factors).  Also, I envision that the book would be similar
(possibly slightly larger) to the Intro as far as size is concerned.

Would someone here be interested in something like this?

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl