does anyone know the history about who are the main persons that wrote
the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual?
According to the manual itself:
http://xahlee.org/elisp/Acknowledgements.html
quote:
«This manual was written by Robert Krawitz, Bil Lewis, Dan LaLiberte,
Richard M. Stallman and Chris Welty, the volunteers of the GNU manual
group, in an effort extending over several years. Robert J. Chassell
helped to review and edit the manual, with the support of the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA Order 6082, arranged by Warren
A. Hunt, Jr. of Computational Logic, Inc.»
So, the first author listed are Robert Krawitz and others. Richard
Stallman didn't come until after 3 names.
Does anyone have some history or reference as to how the manual came
together or better picture of who are the main authors?
By publishing convention, if i were just to write “written by xyz et
al.”, that would be Robert Krawitz. But as far as i know the first few
persons listed are little known... anyone got detail?
Thanks.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
On Jun 19, 8:52 pm, ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> wrote:
> does anyone know the history about who are the main persons that wrote
> the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual?
>
I suspect that the acknowledgements are correct. For a long time
there was no elisp reference manual at all - there was an emacs manual
and there were docstrings but that was it. Certainly this was true in
the Emacs 17 timeframe. I have some vague memory that there was a
period when there was an elisp manual you could get from some
different source than emacs, written by, I suppose, these people, but
then it got merged.
--tim
P� Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:44:44 +0200, skrev Tim Bradshaw
<··········@tfeb.org>:
> On Jun 19, 8:52�pm, ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> wrote:
>> does anyone know the history about who are the main persons that wrote
>> the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual?
>>
>
> I suspect that the acknowledgements are correct. For a long time
> there was no elisp reference manual at all - there was an emacs manual
> and there were docstrings but that was it. Certainly this was true in
> the Emacs 17 timeframe. I have some vague memory that there was a
> period when there was an elisp manual you could get from some
> different source than emacs, written by, I suppose, these people, but
> then it got merged.
>
> --tim
From emacs 18 on at least there was a elisp manual. But you had to
download it seperatly.
(I only started with emacs in 1987)
--------------
John Thingstad
From: Robert L Knighten
Subject: Re: history of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
Date:
Message-ID: <86wskk4imz.fsf@zeus.knighten.org>
·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> writes:
> does anyone know the history about who are the main persons that wrote
> the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual?
>
> According to the manual itself:
>
> http://xahlee.org/elisp/Acknowledgements.html
>
> quote:
>
> «This manual was written by Robert Krawitz, Bil Lewis, Dan LaLiberte,
> Richard M. Stallman and Chris Welty, the volunteers of the GNU manual
> group, in an effort extending over several years. Robert J. Chassell
> helped to review and edit the manual, with the support of the Defense
> Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA Order 6082, arranged by Warren
> A. Hunt, Jr. of Computational Logic, Inc.»
>
> So, the first author listed are Robert Krawitz and others. Richard
> Stallman didn't come until after 3 names.
>
> Does anyone have some history or reference as to how the manual came
> together or better picture of who are the main authors?
>
> By publishing convention, if i were just to write “written by xyz et
> al.”, that would be Robert Krawitz. But as far as i know the first few
> persons listed are little known... anyone got detail?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Xah
> ∑ http://xahlee.org/
>
Even though I get acknowledged in the manual, my contribution was 20 years ago
and my memory is fading. But there is a little bit of information at
http://www.gnu.org/bulletings/bull4.html which says: "Thanks to Dan LaLiberte
for spearheading the GNU Emacs Lisp Programmers Manual, and to Bill Lewis and
Tom Scott who have been working on putting it all together."
You can read a little bit about Dan LaLiberte's contribution (as a graduate
student at University of Illinois - Urbana Champagne) at his web page:
http://www.hypernews.org/~liberte/ and I expect he will be happy to tell you
more.
I remember exchanging e-mail with him and also recall Bil Lewis
(http://www.lambdacs.com/bil/bil.html) being involved, but I don't recall Tom
Scott and notice that his name disappeared by the time the manual was actually
published. I think that Krawitz and Welty are relatively recent additions to
the team and that neither LaLiberte nor Lewis are currently active. My
recollection was that as on pretty much all parts of GNU Emacs Stallman's role
on the Emacs Lisp manual was as original creator, godfather and critic of all
things Emacs.
--
Bob Knighten
···@knighten.org
Thanks. Very informative.
I've added few more links i found to home pages of some of the other
major contributors.
http://xahlee.org/emacs/day_one.html
Xah
☄
Xah wrote:
> > Does anyone have some history or reference as to how the manual came
> > together or better picture of who are the main authors?
On Jun 20, 1:26 am, Robert L Knighten <····@knighten.org> wrote:
> Even though I get acknowledged in the manual, my contribution was 20 years ago
> and my memory is fading. But there is a little bit of information athttp://www.gnu.org/bulletings/bull4.htmlwhich says: "Thanks to Dan LaLiberte
> for spearheading the GNU Emacs Lisp Programmers Manual, and to Bill Lewis and
> Tom Scott who have been working on putting it all together."
>
> You can read a little bit about Dan LaLiberte's contribution (as a graduate
> student at University of Illinois - Urbana Champagne) at his web page:http://www.hypernews.org/~liberte/and I expect he will be happy to tell you
> more.
>
> I remember exchanging e-mail with him and also recall Bil Lewis
> (http://www.lambdacs.com/bil/bil.html) being involved, but I don't recall Tom
> Scott and notice that his name disappeared by the time the manual was actually
> published. I think that Krawitz and Welty are relatively recent additions to
> the team and that neither LaLiberte nor Lewis are currently active. My
> recollection was that as on pretty much all parts of GNU Emacs Stallman's role
> on the Emacs Lisp manual was as original creator, godfather and critic of all
> things Emacs.
Howdy folks,
Thanks to Dan Weinreb for pointing me at this recent exchange. You
guys have done a fine job of digging up this ancient history, but I am
glad to offer any more tidbits I can recall.
Starting with Emacs 17, and transitioning to Emacs 18, I was trying to
develop a rather substantial extension and I was forced to learn what
I could from the very limited doc strings, and the source itself. I
started putting together a document for my own use of all the
functions, variables, etc, and at some point started sharing this with
others. I didn't think I had time to really finish this
documentation, but I recall announcing my offer to coordinate the
efforts of others if they would help out.
With a group of about a dozen volunteers, we hobbled along for a year
or so, and then we learned that Bil Lewis had offered to write up a
first draft of the entire manual, which he then did in cooperation
with our group. I received his work as it was being written and
edited it, reorganizing the material substantially over the next year
or two. My graduate research work was delayed as a result, but I was
having fun, getting into it and receiving the reward of compliments
from grateful readers. I'd have to say that most of the first year
of work was overwritten a couple times by this process, so we probably
dropped some of the minor acknowledgments as well.
Although I had a major hand in every chapter, the one on the Edebug
source-level debugger was all mine, of course, since I had written the
software. Having mastered everything about the language and
environment, it became obvious to me in a flash how to build Edebug,
and the first version was hacked out in a couple weeks. This little
diversion turned into a major project, and a new subject for my
masters research.
Shortly before Emacs 19 started to come out, I was finishing up the
indexing (including a very useful permuted index) and we were "done"
and then RMS wanted to take control. After a few more months of his
reediting, cleaning up all my rampant use of passive voice and such,
it was published in a two-volume book. Later editions by RMS and
others incorporated the Emacs 19 features. I got back into my
research and lost touch.
Since the web grabbed my attention around 1994, I haven't done much of
anything with Emacs, except I continue to be a reluctant user, stuck
with emacs bindings to my brain, frustrated by its archaic UI as the
world moves on. Now JavaScript is my favorite language, and the web
browser would be the environment in which one might do everything,
except we are not quite there yet.
Daniel LaLiberte
·······@hypernews.org (go ahead, spammers, make my day)
(also ··········@gmail.com)