RE: How to get skills in elisp ?

[Drew Adams]

> Seems I've gotten a rather long group listing for a load 
> path. Any ideas on how to wrangle it back down to perhaps
> two or so directories?

Put the code you need in just those two or so directories. ;-)

Just what is the problem you have with a long `load-path'? 

> Not sure where to go to set it for Emacs itself. My dot emacs 
> file evaluates out the long path listing.

Dunno what you mean ("for Emacs itself"=?, "evaluates out"=?).

Set your `load-path' in your init file (.emacs) or in some file that you load
from your init file.

> I want to finish hacking the dot emacs and then byte compile 
> it, set a new dot emacs up.
> ;;; Included in the new dot emacs
> (require 'emacs-source.elc)

Yes, that's fine. But use just (require 'emacs-source). And you will need to put
(provide 'emacs-source) somewhere in emacs-source.el.

But don't bother to byte-compile your init file (.emacs). Keep it short and
sweet. Let it load other stuff (e.g. emacs-source.elc) that loads other stuff.
The other stuff can be byte-compiled.

> However, that darn load path issue bugs me. 

I don't understand what the issue is. What's wrong with the path being long?

> (add-to-list 'load-path 
> "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacs-goodies-el/color-theme.el")

Just use /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacs-goodies-el - no need to mention any
individual files you want to load. Assuming the order of directories in your
`load-path' is what you want, you should be able to just have directories there.

`load-path' tells Emacs where to look. `load-library', `load', `load-file', and
`require' tell Emacs which libraries to load. It will look for them by
consulting `load-path'.

HTH.