Re: Futile bug reports?

[Bill Richter]

Sorry Richard, I can't leave this alone:

       The textbook of a first-year Scheme course, such as SICP or
       HTDP, would then *not* be considered a "manual", so there is no
       policy violation in recommending SICP on g.e.h.

   I would agree that SICP is outside the scope of documentation.  An
   introduction to Scheme would definitely be documentation, though.

I think this represents a crazy policy.  

Basically you're saying that SICP fails to be an Emacs manual because
it's too advanced, and then I argued that SICP describes itself as
being "an introduction to Scheme".

We shouldn't be using the criterion of introduction-ness in a free
manuals discussion.  I suggest that the criterion should be

Was the proprietary book written *primarily* to help users to use this
particular piece of GNU software?

So, SICP might help budding Emacs Lisp programmers, but it was not
written with Emacs in mind, or even Emacs Lisp, so there's no
violation, regardless of how elementary SICP is or isn't.

And the C book K&R could be discussed on gnu.gcc.help, even though K&R
is usually described as an "an introduction to C", because K&R was not
written with Gcc in mind.  Gcc didn't even exist when K&R was written.
A proprietary book that's primarily about how Gcc, how Gcc differs
from other C compilers etc, shouldn't be discussed on gnusnet.

Not that this any of this is likely to arise, folks on gnu.gcc.help
don't chat about C books AFAIK, and there's little interest in SICP on
g.e.h., but still, why have a half-cocked policy?


-- 
Bill <http://www.math.nwu.edu/~richter>