Re: Pertinent NEWS parts for the Emacs 26 manual draft

[Richard Stallman]

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  > > Would someone please look at the NEWS files for Emacs 26, Emacs 25 and
  > > Emacs 24 and extract the parts that are relevant to the Emacs manual?
  > > 
  > > THe parts to include are those about changes in user commands and
  > > user-visible behavior, but excluding changes in modes that are not
  > > documented in the Emacs manual (which is most of them).

  > Maybe I misunderstand, but don't the "+++" markers in NEWS already
  > tell that?

Whether the +++ markings are a reliable guide depends on the state of
work on NEWS.  They might not yet have been put in; they might have
been removed.  An item might have a --- instead, put there because
someone mistakenly thought that item isn't pertinent to the Emacs
Manual.

Supposing that at present all pertineny items have a +++ marking, they
don't necessarily refer to the Emacs Manual; some indicate that a
feature has been documented in the Emacs Lisp Manual.

But even that isn't the deepest point here.  Let's suppose that the
items with +++ are exactly the items a reviewer of the Emacs Manual
shoulod look at.  Is that equivalent to what I've asked for?

Absolutely not!  This is not a math exercise, this is making it easy
for others to do a job we are asking them to do.

With +++ you can (maybe) find the pertinent parts, if you know the
rules and you think about it.

With the filtered NEWS file, you could find them effortlessly.

Please let's make this effortless, to encourage people to check
parts of the Emacs Manual.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.