Emacs setup assistants

[David Kastrup]

Juri Linkov <juri at jurta.org> writes:

> Per Abrahamsen <abraham at dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> > The idea is to skip info altogether, and write an texinfo reader.
> > This way, we could extend the texinfo format with tags needed for
> > wizards (or saints, or assistants).  
> 
> Why not use something more Lispish?
> 
> (defsaint enable-multifile-documents
>           (checkbox :format "%v Enable multifile documents." (not TeX-master))
>   "When @LaTeX{} documents grow large, they are often split up in
> multiple files.  One file is a "master" file, which includes a number
> of nested files.  When formatting the document, you need to run
> @code{latex} on the master file.  If you enable multifile support, AUC
> @TeX{} will automatically run @code{latex} on the master file, even if
> you invoke @kbd{C-c C-c} from one of the nested files.  In order to do
> this, AUC TeX will prompt you for a name of a master file first time
> you edit a file, and insert the name in a comment at the end of the
> file."
>   (require 'tex)
>   (setq saint-on-next-function
>        (lambda (customize-save-variable 'TeX-master 
>                 (not (widget-value enable-multifile-parsing))
>                 "Saint"))))
> 
> But then it looks very much like defcustom.
> 
> So there is a more general question: why not extend Customize
> for a guided tour through options?

Because it does not lend itself to writing?  For Texinfo, we have
modes that facilitate getting a nice, human-manageable document
source.  We don't have that for some weird stuff of Lisp functions.

And this approach does not lend itself to decentralized translation
efforts: you need to translate an entire Emacs Lisp file, including
customizations, completely, or a translated version will break.  In
contrast, my proposal would give a fallback for assisting on new
options when the current translation is not yet featuring it.

We'll get more people willing to manage and translate a Texinfo
document than the DOC strings of some Elisp file.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum