Re: Help hyperlinks only work when auto-compression-mode is enabled.

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

'Evening, Stefan!

On Sun, Jun 10, 2007 at 03:26:56PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > Emacs -Q
> > M-x auto-compression-mode
> > C-h f revert-buffer
> > C-x o    <tab>            ; Point is now over `files.el'
> > <CR>                      ; To go to the definition of `revert-buffer'

> > This gives the error message "Can't find library files.el".  The reason
> > for this is that the source is actually in files.el.gz, and this can
> > only be read when auto-compression-mode is enabled.

> Who compressed files.el?  I don't think this is a standard procedure.
> Or were you using a version of Emacs packaged by some distribution
> like Debian?  If so, please complain to them.

It's done by our very own "make install".  The change was made in
makefile.in V1.305 on 2005-09-15.  I'm not sure I like it either.

> > This is not good; even though a-c-m is enabled by default, our help
> > system should still work if a user disables a-c-m (OUTCH!!! ;-).

> Most of the help still works.  You just can't jump to the source code
> as easily.

You have to open it with C-x C-f.  You also have to type in something
like /usr/local/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/files.el (difficult to remember),
too.

> I'm not absolutely opposed to your patch, but I don't really like it and
> find its need very debatable.

Well, in that case, I think we should refrain from gzipping all the
source files.  But given how unhelpful the error message is and how
difficult it is to track the problem down, _something_ needs to be
fixed.

>         Stefan

-- 
Alan.