seeking a copy of "Writing GNU Emacs extensions" or equivalent

[Claude Rubinson]

On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 10:17:48PM -0800, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> Hey all, I am reaching that point in my Emacs usage where learning some lisp 
> would be good.  In particular I would like to try writing a major mode or 
> two.  Anyone have this book or a pointer to a good, helpful tutorial?  i have
> the GNU emacs lisp intro which is nice for learning lisp but fairly useless 
> for actually writing real code.

I've got a copy of _Writing Emacs Extensions_.  I don't care for it
much (I vastly prefer the emacs-lisp-intro), but it might be what
you're looking for.  I'd strongly recommend spending some time reading
through it before plunking down any change.  It's basically a cookbook
rather than a tutorial -- each chapter focuses on a handful of very
specific tasks (simple commands, writing a minor mode, writing a major
mode, etc) culminating in, bizarrely enough, implementing a crossword
puzzle program in Emacs (which is cool, I guess, but isn't anywhere
close to anything that I'd ever want to do).