Re: Emacs's handling of line numbers [from bug#5042]

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

>> IMO Juri did, by saying that user narrowing and widening commands
>> should not go beyond the current Info node.
>
> Again, user commands in the C-x n prefix map. And I would agree with
> that. Even if it is sometimes (how often?) useful to be able to widen
> the restriction in an Info buffer, that restriction is a programming
> convenience for Info-mode (that it uses narrowing is an implementation
> detail), so Info-mode should offer the way to deactivate it.

Yes, this is what I meant.  The primitive function `widen' should
remove narrowing from the whole buffer completely as it currently does.

But a new user command `widen-command' bound to `C-x n w' should not
remove narrowing that was created programmatically, not by a user command
like `C-x n n'.

When authors of some mode decide that users should be able to remove
narrowing from the whole buffer completely then this mode should provide
a special command to do that.

And indeed, Info mode already has such a command.  It is `g * RET'
that is documented in (info "(info) Go to node") as:

     The node name `*' specifies the whole file.  So you can look at all
  of the current file by typing `g*<RET>' or all of any other file with
  `g(FILENAME)*<RET>'.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/