From: David Masterson <dsmasterson@outlook.com>
To: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
Cc: "35261@debbugs.gnu.org" <35261@debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: bug#35261: 26.1; EBDB Documentation
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 22:22:39 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <BYAPR07MB5734C6E8B5D43AF1D88F0284A5270@BYAPR07MB5734.namprd07.prod.outlook.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <874l6vgkhm.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> (Eric Abrahamsen's message of "Thu, 18 Apr 2019 12:51:33 -0700")
Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
> On 04/17/19 03:14 AM, David Masterson wrote:
>> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>>
>>> On 04/15/19 20:56 PM, David Masterson wrote:
>>
>>>> On that, it seems that the documentation is still evolving in that
>>>> area. For instance, looking at the documentation of ebdb-field-*
>>>> variables says that they are obsolete as of 25.1 and the documentation
>>>> is relatively low, so the error above would be confusing in that you'd
>>>> wonder if you were looking at the right variable.
>>
>>> Unfortunately this doesn't have to do with EBDB, but rather with a weird
>>> interaction between the help system and EIEIO. Class names apparently
>>> once functioned as variables, but no longer do, and so Emacs complains
>>> when you try to treat one as a variable. You'll have better luck using
>>> help to look up the *function* definitions of the class names, not the
>>> variable definition.
>>
>> Ouch! That's not logical and will need some explanation somewhere. The
>> logical assumption would be that the function that is asking for input
>> is using some variable (structure) as a reference for what it expects as
>> input, so, when the error reports a name in the error, the first thought
>> would be that that is the structure to look at to get the clue as to
>> what it's looking for. It's a little confusing (to say the least) for
>> the lay person to see functions and variables with the same name.
>>
>> Something to lay out a little more as a primer in the Info docs?
>
> Mmm, I'm not really inclined to spend a lot of time explaining the
> weirdnesses of Emacs help system in the EBDB manual, but maybe a pointer
> to the function docstrings of the class symbols would be okay.
Yeah, something to point you in the right direction. Try not to make it
too 'lispy' for the newbies...
--
David
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-04-19 22:22 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-04-13 21:26 bug#35261: 26.1; EBDB Documentation David Masterson
2019-04-14 1:50 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-15 3:50 ` David Masterson
2019-04-15 5:07 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-15 20:56 ` David Masterson
2019-04-16 18:54 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-17 3:14 ` David Masterson
2019-04-18 19:51 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-19 22:22 ` David Masterson [this message]
2019-04-16 21:10 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-17 3:41 ` David Masterson
2019-04-18 20:33 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-19 22:31 ` David Masterson
2019-04-20 0:00 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2019-04-21 2:08 ` David Masterson
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