From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Simon Josefsson Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:12:12 +0200 (CEST) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019474187 9128 127.0.0.1 (22 Apr 2002 11:16:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 11:16:27 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Per Abrahamsen , , Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16zbo3-0002N1-00 for ; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:16:27 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16zboi-0002Kd-00 for ; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:17:09 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zbnt-0005Hn-00; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 07:16:17 -0400 Original-Received: from 178.230.13.217.in-addr.dgcsystems.net ([217.13.230.178] helo=yxa.extundo.com) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zbjz-0004zx-00; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 07:12:16 -0400 Original-Received: from yxa.extundo.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by yxa.extundo.com (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g3MBCCKY003558; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:12:12 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost (jas@localhost) by yxa.extundo.com (8.12.2/8.12.1/Submit) with ESMTP id g3MBCCiB003555; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:12:12 +0200 X-Authentication-Warning: yxa.extundo.com: jas owned process doing -bs Original-To: Miles Bader In-Reply-To: Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:3022 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:3022 On 22 Apr 2002, Miles Bader wrote: > Per Abrahamsen writes: > > > Hm. Another approach would be if C-h v and friends groked :link. > > > Maybe that is better. Yes, probably. Existing doc strings that > > > contains duplicated links in docstring and :link would need to be > > > fixed though. > > > > Yes, it has been on my list of "small projects I really ought to do" > > for some time now. > > I think that's not the best solution for this problem, since there's > already enough information to make such a connection automatically in > the great majority of cases. Are you saying that customize should adopt the "See info node" docstring magic instead? Another reason for that approach instead of the :link one is that it makes the docstring contain all the documentation, including pointers to other places. I think I have changed my mind. Making all code that displays or parse docstrings somehow support :link as well isn't the best approach. It is easier to use the docstring, and have well defined tags such as "See Info node" convert into buttons for customize. > > A more controversial solution would be to > > > > (defalias 'describe-variable 'customize-variable) > > Yes; that would be very bad. > > Customization buffers are filled with all sorts of crap that's > completely unnecessary when you just want to see a quick description of > a variable (which is about 99% of the time for me), which would distract > greatly from the actual documentation (not to mention ballooning the > size of help buffers to something absurd). The customize screen could be cleaned up to solve this. However, I find customize-variable slow compared to describe-variable so I agree this would be a bad solution.