Re: apropos for packages [was: plz -> curl?]

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> CC: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>, Philip
>  Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>, "mardani29@yahoo.es" <mardani29@yahoo.es>,
>  emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 16:23:20 +0000
> 
> I wrote:
> 
> > 2. It would be good to update `apropos-documentation',
> >    if this has not already been done, to include the
>      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >    doc of packages.
> 
> It seems that, at least as recently as Emacs 27.2,
> this has not been done, in spite of the doc of
> `apropos-documentation' saying this:
> 
>   With C-u prefix, or if ‘apropos-do-all’ is non-nil,
>   it searches all currently defined documentation
>   strings.
> 
> For example, `C-u C-h d backtrace' doesn't show an
> entry for package `backtrace', even though the pkg
> doc string mentions "backtrace".  (Emacs 27.2)

You are taking that text out of its context.  The doc string _really_
says this:

  Show symbols whose documentation contains matches for PATTERN.

And now we understand why you don't see the package backtrace.el: it's
because it is not a symbol.

> If this has still not been fixed in Emacs 28, do we
> need a bug filed for this, or can it just please be
> fixed without a bug?

I don't think it would make sense to add packages to
apropos-documentation.  That command is supposed to search doc strings
of symbols: variables, functions, faces, etc.  Adding packages to that
would cause the results to show completely unrelated stuff.

So I'm against this.  Packages should have (and already do have)
specialized commands that search their descriptions, keywords, etc.