ready-lisp VS helpful

A few weeks ago, I was interested to actually include HS as info files I found in GCL or the one I found in an old package by Wiegley, into some form in SLY or as a standalone package for reading in Emacs info. While looking for info files, I found this old discussion on GCLs mailing list. It seemed like they included the standard, not the draft. Note the mail by Maguire in which he informs that the issue has been solved "offline". Up to date as I write this, GCL comes with those info files.

Both cl-community-spec and nova-spec looks very nice; I haven't seen any of them before; however, I prefer hyperspec directly in Emacs, so I can read it with C-h i. I have found two different versions that work nice, one is by J. Wiegley in his ready-lisp, it also has asdf in texinfo. Another one is in GCL; I have just cloned the repo and pointed Emacs to texinfo sources. In both cases it requires the manual installation; but I prefer to not have to toggle between Emacs and Browser. Eww probably works, but I found it to be slightly slow; reading offline manual in info mode is just way too faster to be ignored IMO :).

Anyway, we do lack Common Lisp info manuals in Emacs docs. You can git clone from the Gcl compiler, or clone from J. Wigleys read-lisp, but you will have to manually install them into Emacs (thus far). Gcl have lots of parts related to Gcl itself, but the hyperspec works fine (just ignore gcl parts), while Wiegleys is just hyperspec.

If you want to programmatically create files, write to them, etc, then read the fine manual, it comes with your Emacs, has index, search and web-like navigation. It is well worth your time investing in looking up the manual, both for Emacs and for Elisp. You access the manual via C-h i. Another good thing to learn how to use is Emacs built-in help. As a minimal basic, C-h f will display information about functions, and C-h v will display the documentation for variables. You can also see where things are declared, open the source code, etc. A good alternative to built-in help is Helpful, which I suggest installing and start using too.

It tweaks Emacs GC. You can run M-x describe-variable while your cursor is at gc-cons-threshold to learn about it. If you opted-in for using "Vim bindings" (Evil mode), you can press K while in normal mode. Note that K doesn't run the describe- command in Doom, but it runs helpful-command from (https://github.com/Wilfred/helpful), which provides more context that describe- commands usually do.

The packages helpful and elisp-demos are super useful because they enhance Emacs' built-in documentation.

You can try to actually use helpful for a while. There was also a package with examples, I don't remember the name, perhaps someone else knows which I mean, that shows usage of a function where available. I remember using it and found it very useful for a while when I was learning elisp more actively. I still use helpful sometimes.

Once you got the hang of keybindings, which-key is a helpful extension (aka package) to Emacs. At this stage, there are other helpful packages and keybindings.

helpful for better help buffers

Since you seem interested, have a look at elisp-demos , too. It works in tandem with helpful.

Elisp Docs are fantastic they have documented everything while with CL most documentation is missing or only on the Web. With Emacs, one need to learn about C-h f (describe-function), C-h k (describe-key), helpful.el and elisp-demos and a new world opens. Terminology is always different, simple example: Microsoft terminology sounds like bullshit, to a Unix person.

Your primary source of knowledge will be the manual and the built-in discoverability (describe-* functions, or helpful) and of course reading the code. I'm not a manual person myself, but Emacs is one of the examples where it is truly excellent and has answers for almost everything.