From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Drew Adams Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: bug#46627: [External] : bug#46627: [PATCH] Add new help command 'describe-command' Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2021 20:35:28 +0000 Message-ID: References: <835z2o4fes.fsf@gnu.org> <83blcezntj.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="16708"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: "larsi@gnus.org" , "rms@gnu.org" , "46627@debbugs.gnu.org" <46627@debbugs.gnu.org> To: Eli Zaretskii , Stefan Kangas Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sat Feb 20 21:36:25 2021 Return-path: Envelope-to: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1lDYzJ-0003oK-4P for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; 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Emacs never originally meant a lot of things that were later expanded (or repurposed to some degree) to advantage. This is normal for many processes of change. Exaptation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptation Spandrel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) > > So the idea is to combine searching for commands > > with looking up their documentation. >=20 > I'm not sure this is a good idea, FWIW. For starters, it is limited: > if you spot a command whose name sounds relevant, you have no simple > way getting details about it. Unlike apropos commands, which do > provide such ways. "You have no such simple way" ... until you do. Icicles (and I'm sure some other 3rd-party code that enhances completion) can provide help on individual completion candidates. When completion candidates are things that have doc strings, Icicles shows the first line of the doc string for the "current" completion candidate in the mode-line of the *Completions* window. When you cycle among some candidates, you see their help there. And you can hit a key to see the complete doc string for the current candidate (it's shown in *Help*). You mention apropos commands. They're great in part because they allow keyword & regexp matching. This is also true for Icicles completion. You can use `M-x' with a regexp pattern as input, to see all commands whose names match. And thus, to also get access to their doc. And unlike apropos, you can quickly change the match pattern. And you don't need to scan a long list of output when you're only interested in the doc of this, that, or the other matching name. It's not that this is _better_ than apropos. It's different. Each has advantages, just as `occur' and Isearch have different advantages. Is the _purpose_ of `M-x' to invoke a command? Sure - or not. Because you can _also_ use it to browse command doc (and in other ways, not mentioned), you can, if you want, sometimes use it just for that - not bothering to invoke any command. "Emacs never meant..." Emacs never intended... Right. But now it does - at least with some 3rd-party packages.