Max Nikulin <[email protected]> writes: > On 12/12/2025 05:13, Jacob S. Gordon wrote: >> In the manual and a few other places I noticed references to ‘printf’ >> formatting despite the Emacs ‘format’ being used. > > I believe that "printf" is widely used to describe formatting while > `format' is specific to Emacs, so in user docs printf should be > preferable. Not all Org mode users are necessary closely familiar with > elisp. > It may be stressed however that it is not exactly C formatters. > > I do not think that avoiding "printf" makes the manual more clear for > new users.
Another way to look at it, though, is that (gasp!) not all Org mode users are necessarily all that closely familiar with *any* programming language, or only be familiar with Javascript.* Then the English word "format" might make more sense than the nonsense string "printf," even if they don't know that format is the name of an elisp function. Or they might be more familiar with Java than with C and friends, in which case "format" would recall String.format(), and again be more understandable than "printf". So I don't think it matters much either way in terms of clarity for new users. What matters is that the manual gives useful examples, and it does. But perhaps it would be helpful if the manual also referred to the docstring of format or to [[info:elisp#Formatting Strings][elisp#Formatting Strings]] for details on how to construct format specifications. Regards, Christian
