I don't know if the nature of the storage for lisp
docstring data is mandated.
There is a (setf (documentation 'foo 'bar) "stuff")...
In lisp
-- perhaps it can be implemented out of core.
One nice thing about this is that one can compute (in Lisp) with the
contents of the documentation string. For example one could in principle
search for all documentation of functions with certain words in their
description. Or authored by certain people (if we recorded authorship in
the documentation), or by date (again, if recorded..) etc.
I think it would be good to add documentation; I find myself hesitant about
some of this impulse because documentation added by someone who does not in
fact know much about the function being documented can be misleading. We
already have some of this in the maxima documents. The old Symbolics/
Macsyma Inc. documentation appears to describe the Macsyma program somewhat
more accurately; I keep on hoping that the material (all online) could be
used to make the Maxima documentation better (at least in the case where the
functionality is the same!!).
-----Original Message-----
From: maxima-admin at math.utexas.edu [mailto:maxima-admin at math.utexas.edu] On
Behalf Of Raymond Toy
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 7:36 AM
To: Vadim V. Zhytnikov
Cc: Richard Fateman; 'Robert Dodier'; maxima at math.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: [Maxima] cl-info revision
>>>>> "Vadim" == Vadim V Zhytnikov <vvzhy at mail.ru> writes:
Vadim> I'm not sure what such functionality is really important.
Vadim> After all I user really wants to add new topics (how often this
Vadim> may really happen) to Maxima documentation he can do this
Vadim> by modifying documentation source and rebuilding it.
I think it would be rather nice. Having used cmucl/sbcl's DESCRIBE
function or emacs apropos/describe, it's very handy to be able to
provide your own documentation without having to learn how to write
texinfo files. In lisp, I just add the appropriate docstring, and I
have documentation. In fact, if I knew how, I'd want the documentation
for every maxima function or variable to be in the function/variable
itself, instead of in some separate file.
(Actually, I'd like if even the internal maxima functions included
docstrings. It makes the core size bigger, but I think the benefits
outweigh the cost.)
Ray
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