Re: reading/writing binary data in structured form

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> >> Kim, is there a reason not to make bindat-pack and bindat-unpack
>> >> autoloaded?
>> 
>> > Only that I envisioned that people would explicitly require bindat
>> > if they need the features it provides.
>> 
>> Indeed.  It doesn't seem to make much sense to autoload part of it.

> Yes, but can it hurt?  We could put comments there explaining the
> reasons, in case at some point in the future doing so for the sake of
> documentation search will not be necessary.

It's not very satisfactory.  Maybe we should simply mention the package
in the lispref.

>> Maybe we should begin by improving the C-h p answer.
> I'm for it, but IMHO "C-h p" cannot be a precise tool, because it is
> based on too small amount of info (a few keywords), whereas
> apropos-documentation has much more to play with.

I don't think it "cannot be a precise tool" much more than C-h i cannot
be a precise tool.  But I agree that it requires a non-trivial amount
of work.  It would be worthwhile, tho.


        Stefan