Re: New Flymake rewrite in emacs-26

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (João Távora)
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:25:30 +0100
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > We should add some minimal documentation about the new features.
> 
> I added this to doc/misc/flymake.texi. It needs proofreading, but
> otherwise I consider it a fairly complete description of the new API.

Thanks, I've proofread it and made several fixes, please take a look.
(I can explain each change I made, if it is not immediately apparent
from the change itself or the log message.)

> > This should be in NEWS, perhaps after adjusting the style a bit.
> 
> I'm not great at summarizing changes in a NEWS-snazzy manner, but a
> patch is attached.

Looks good, see a couple of minor comments below.

> Apart from that, I see these loose ends:
> 
> * Are we keeping track of the Flymake backends developed by people?

You mean, in the manual?  I'd prefer not to, since such information
quickly becomes obsolete, and keeping it up to date imposes a
maintenance burden we'd better avoided.

If you mean track them somewhere else, please tell.

> * Should Flymake do something with next-error-function?

I thought it already did?

> * There is a "Flymake diagnostics buffer" sub-feature in
>   scratch/flymake-diagnostics-buffer.  It is reasonably stable.  Is it
>   OK to merge into emacs-26?

If it's easy to show a diff for such a merge, please do.

> * Shouldn't flymake.texi be split into two parts, one for the Emacs
>   manual and another for Emacs Lisp manual?

It doesn't seem worth the hassle.  Most users will be programmers
anyway.

> +*** Flymake has been completely redesigned
> +
> +Flymake now annotates arbitrary buffer regions, not just lines. It
> +supports arbitrary diagnostic types, not not just errors and warnings
                                        ^^^
Extra "not".

> +                                 Backends for Emacs-lisp mode are
> +provided.

I think this should be in single.  And the correct spelling is "Emacs
Lisp mode".

Also, please use our convention of keeping 2 spaces between sentences.

Otherwise, please push these changes, and thanks.