Re: fontsets/charsets documentation suggestion

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: address@hidden
> From: Eric Abrahamsen <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 18:40:56 -0700
> 
> > This is in the manual, see the node "Character Sets" and maybe the
> > other nodes from its parent "Non-ASCII Characters", if you need more
> > background.
> >
> > If something is missing or unclear, please post more specific gripes.
> 
> Hmm, I wonder if this is part of the problem. Section 26 of my Emacs  
> Info file is 'International Character Set Support', and everything  
> relevant seems to be under this heading. I don't see a 'Character  
> Sets' or a 'Non-ASCII Characters' node. There's no index entry for  
> 'registry', neither does a grep of the info files for 'registry'  
> produce any definition of the word as related to fonts. Am I looking  
> in the wrong place? (I'm using a CVS build on Mac OSX, the ns  
> Emacs.app version.)

I meant the Emacs Lisp manual, not the User manual.  Sorry, I should
have made that clear, but for some reason (perhaps because you
mentioned create-fontset-from-fontset-spec) I thought you were already
looking there, and that you need this information for writing Lisp
code.

> The existing examples would be clear if I'd gone into it actually  
> understanding the difference between a charset, a script and a  
> registry, and knowing which variables contained the possible values  
> for each of these three concepts. My particular use-case was defining  
> specific fonts for English/Latin, Chinese and Thai, and I did not  
> understand where 'han' came from, and its relationship to 'chinese- 
> gb2312' (I have since been directed to charset-script-alist). If I'm  
> actually missing a chunk of the documentation this would be better.
> 
> There aren't any examples of using create-fontset-from-fontset-spec,  
> and it would be nice to see one or two. The documentation for the  
> function is technically correct, I'm sure, but is the kind of  
> documentation that's only useful if you already understand how it  
> works. Neither 26.15 Defining Fontsets nor the documentation say how  
> you actually employ a fontset once you've made it. This has got to be  
> one of the most complex areas of Emacs customization, and it would be  
> nice to err on the side of too much hand-holding.

I agree that the description of fontsets in the User manual is barely
minimal, especially if the user (a) needs to create complex fontsets
dealing with several different character sets, and (b) does not
already know quite a lot about character sets.  The problem is that
most people who work on the manual know very little about subtleties
and intricacies of fontsets, and it clearly shows in the quality of
that section.

I wonder if the stuff in the ELisp manual helps in any way.  If it
does, we could copy some of it, with suitable editing, into the User
manual.