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From: | Glenn Morris |
Subject: | Re: /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r112347: * doc/lispintro/emacs-lisp-intro.texi (defcustom, defun, simplified-beginning-of-buffer, defvar, Building Robots, Review, save-excursion): `defun' and `defcustom' are now macros rather than special forms. (Bug#13853) |
Date: | Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:07:33 -0400 |
User-agent: | Gnus (www.gnus.org), GNU Emacs (www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) |
The problem I saw with these changes, and the reason I did not fix it at the time it was reported, is that previously "special form" was defined (in a simple way using only a couple of sentences) before it was used to refer to any particular function. Now the term "macro" is used well before it is defined. So the manual no longer makes sense when read in order, which matters for an introduction IMO. It needs more work that just replacing "special form" by "macro" in a few places. Also, the menu is now inconsistent: * defun:: The @code{defun} special form. etc > -(Another special form, @code{defcustom}, is designed for variables > -that people customize. It has more features than @code{defvar}. > -(@xref{defcustom, , Setting Variables with @code{defcustom}}.) Why was this removed? It could have been simply changed to "Another function,... ". The reference to defcustom is the important thing, not the details of whether it is a special form or macro. PS Please keep commit log lines to ~ 80 chars in length. The first line should be a summary that can stand alone. Eg "Minor emacs-lisp-intro updates related to special forms"
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