Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> If the general direction here is okay, I will provide a full proposal,
> including thinking through the order.

Please find attached an updated proposal.

My overarching goal here has been to design this as an _overview_ of
_important_ and _non-obvious_ information.

This is a summary of the changes:

- Added sections.

- Drastically shortened descriptions of the command.

- Changed ordering to be roughly based on: order of importance, logical
  grouping of related items, and the Emacs manual.

- Removed the indication about which commands will show a prompt.
  [Rationale: I find that information overly pedantic, messy and fully
  redundant; it will either be obvious from context or, at the very
  least, when invoking a given help command.]

I'm not sure what is considered a large attachment these days, so I
posted a screenshot at some image host:

    https://i.imgur.com/Cv67yUN.png

To facilitate the discussion, I have also pasted below the plain text of
the help buffer.  The patch is attached below.


(Type SPC or DEL to scroll, or q to exit.)

Getting Help

   m	Help for current minor and major modes and their commands
   b	Show all key bindings
   k	Show help for key
   c	Show help for key briefly
   w	Show which key runs a given command

   a	Search for commands (see also M-x apropos)
   d	Search documentation of functions, variables, and other items
   f	Show help for function
   o	Show help for function or variable
   v	Show help for variable

Info Manuals

   r	Show Emacs manual
   F	Show Emacs manual section for command
   K	Show Emacs manual section for command bound to key
   i	Show all included manuals
   R	Show given manual
   S	Find symbol in Info manual for current programming language

Misc Help

   p	Search for packages matching topic
   P	Describe Emacs Lisp package
   e	Show recent messages
   g	Show information about the GNU project
   l	Show last 300 input keystrokes (lossage)
   s	Show current syntax table
   .	Show local help at point
   t	Start the Emacs tutorial

Help Files

   C-a	About Emacs
   C-c	Emacs copying permission (GNU General Public License)
   C-d	Debugging GNU Emacs
   C-e	External packages
   C-f	Emacs FAQ
   C-m	Order printed Emacs manuals
   C-n	News of recent Emacs changes
   C-o	Emacs ordering and distribution information
   C-p	Known Emacs problems
   C-t	Emacs TODO
   C-w	Information on absence of warranty for GNU Emacs

Language Help

   C	Describe coding system
   I	Describe input method
   L	Describe language environment
   h	Display the HELLO file illustrating various scripts