Re: Emacs Mini Manual (PART 3) - CUSTOMIZING AND EXTENDING EMACS

[Emanuel Berg]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> I only have a very old version of the manual - Emacs
>> 18, I think - but I read that twice.
>
> Really?  You have _only_ an old version?

Yes. It is actually a very cool item. The pages are in
A4 and it has a light-blue cover and dark-blue heft. A
big section is about the GNU philosophy. It is in
questions and answers, and in the questions there is
criticism of the whole idea. That's brave! You get the
feeling it was much more alive back then and not just a
set of axioms, a "stamp" you accept in principle but
nonetheless ignore in practice, eager to get to the
technology part of whatever documentation or piece of
source.

> If you have a version of Emacs more recent than 18
> then you should also have its manual, as part of
> Emacs.

Well, this is actually not the case as was recently
discussed in another thread. With 'info Emacs' I get
the Emacs FAQ, not the manual. There was mention of
some bad blood between the Emacs people and the Debian
people, who considered the Emacs manual non-free (no idea
why). I have of course access to the non-free repos, but
there is no emacs-doc like with gcc which documentation
(the manpage) Debian also has issues with.

Wait - I think I got it, it is probably
emacs24-common-non-dfsg, right? DFSG is "Debian Free
Software Guidelines".

> (And if you do have the manual for your version then
> you should be reading that, not (just) the Emacs 18
> manual.)

Well, should and should... I'm not going to read it on
the screen by the computer, that's for sure.

> Even if, for some reason, you do not have a more
> recent manual than 18, recent manuals are available
> online.  For example:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/

Yes, this seems to be the PDF, ready to print:

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/pdf/emacs.pdf

Alright, I'll do it. I know you contributed to it so
I'll just blame you for everything I don't like. But
actually I think I'll like all or most of it.

-- 
underground experts united