Thanks to Dan Weinreb for pointing me at this recent exchange.   You
guys have done a fine job of digging up this ancient history, but I am
glad to offer any more tidbits I can recall.

Starting with Emacs 17, and transitioning to Emacs 18, I was trying to
develop a rather substantial extension and I was forced to learn what
I could from the very limited doc strings, and the source itself.  I
started putting together a document for my own use of all the
functions, variables, etc, and at some point started sharing this with
others.  I didn't think I had time to really finish this
documentation, but I recall announcing my offer to coordinate the
efforts of others if they would help out.

With a group of about a dozen volunteers, we hobbled along for a year
or so, and then we learned that Bil Lewis had offered to write up a
first draft of the entire manual, which he then did in cooperation
with our group.  I received his work as it was being written and
edited it, reorganizing the material substantially over the next year
or two.  My graduate research work was delayed as a result, but I was
having fun, getting into it and receiving the reward of compliments
from grateful readers.   I'd have to say that most of the first year
of work was overwritten a couple times by this process, so we probably
dropped some of the minor acknowledgments as well.

Although I had a major hand in every chapter, the one on the Edebug
source-level debugger was all mine, of course, since I had written the
software.  Having mastered everything about the language and
environment, it became obvious to me in a flash how to build Edebug,
and the first version was hacked out in a couple weeks.  This little
diversion turned into a major project, and a new subject for my
masters research.

Shortly before Emacs 19 started to come out, I was finishing up the
indexing (including a very useful permuted index) and we were "done"
and then RMS wanted to take control.  After a few more months of his
reediting, cleaning up all my rampant use of passive voice and such,
it was published in a two-volume book.   Later editions by RMS and
others incorporated the Emacs 19 features.  I got back into my
research and lost touch.

Since the web grabbed my attention around 1994, I haven't done much of
anything with Emacs, except I continue to be a reluctant user, stuck
with emacs bindings to my brain, frustrated by its archaic UI as the
world moves on.  Now JavaScript is my favorite language, and the web
browser would be the environment in which one might do everything,
except we are not quite there yet.