Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!gatech!swrinde!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!uunet.ca!news.uunet.ca!wildcan!sq!dak
From: dak@sq.com (David A. 'dak' Keldsen)
Subject: Re: history of decision against documentation
Message-ID: <1996Apr11.150548.11910@sq.com>
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
References: <3037656203674911@arcana.naggum.no> <4k3f0v$krh@usenet2.interramp.com> <3037716228318999@arcana.naggum.no> <4k6bsd$st1@agate.berkeley.edu> <3037873965239270@arcana.naggum.no> <316B7D02.5A00@ida.liu.se> <3038172926442633@arcana.naggum.no>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 15:05:48 GMT
Lines: 47


>|   I don't quite follow you here.  Lack of online documentation is clearly
>|   not a fault of Scheme itself, but of the programming environment of
>|   your Scheme implementation.

Eric Naggum wrote:

>the context of my question was documentation strings in defining forms and
>access to same, as well as `apropos', `describe', and the like, not online
>manuals.  I regret to that I did not maintain this context explicitly.

>to be very specific in my quest: do any extant implementations of Scheme
>include the mechanisms that are found in many other development systems
>(including, but _not_ limited to Common Lisp or its precursors) to provide
>the programmer with access to the argument (lambda) list, an `apropos' to
>locate symbols, a `describe' to obtain as much information as possible
>about an object, and a `documentation' to obtain specific documentation
>automatically (meaning, not having to look it up in an index by hand, or
>re-type the identifier in some other online documentation system)?

Yes.

SoftQuad Sculptor, which includes an extended Scheme implementation used
to customize SoftQuad Author/Editor (our SGML editor), has a simple
'apropos' and 'describe'.  We've found them very useful, and not hard to
implement.

> (apropos "describe")
describe                        procedure of 1 argument
   defined in:  ../scm/apropos.scm
  "Describe the top-level binding of the symbol, including methods for classes"
describe-briefly                procedure of 1 argument
   defined in:  ../scm/apropos.scm
  "Given a symbol, describe the top-level binding of the symbol"
describe-command-request        procedure of 1 argument
   defined in:  ../scm/apropos.scm
  "Given a symbol, describe the command-request"
#<unspecified>
> 

Regards,
Dak
--
David A. 'Dak' Keldsen
Product Development Manager
SoftQuad Inc.
Toronto, Canada
