From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Drew Adams Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: RE: Is Emacs very alive, active and improving? Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:05:39 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <87r4ddo4yp.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <87d2oww758.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1377810370 26987 80.91.229.3 (29 Aug 2013 21:06:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 21:06:10 +0000 (UTC) To: Emanuel Berg , help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Aug 29 23:06:11 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VF9Pu-0000Ks-Cb for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 23:06:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45767 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VF9Pt-0001Cc-T3 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 17:06:09 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41301) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VF9Pb-0001BI-Qf for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 17:06:00 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VF9PT-0000KA-8P for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 17:05:51 -0400 Original-Received: from aserp1040.oracle.com ([141.146.126.69]:44351) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VF9PT-0000J3-2N for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 17:05:43 -0400 Original-Received: from acsinet21.oracle.com (acsinet21.oracle.com [141.146.126.237]) by aserp1040.oracle.com (Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1/Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1) with ESMTP id r7TL5fsq017258 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK); Thu, 29 Aug 2013 21:05:42 GMT Original-Received: from aserz7022.oracle.com (aserz7022.oracle.com [141.146.126.231]) by acsinet21.oracle.com (8.14.4+Sun/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r7TL5e7w022397 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 29 Aug 2013 21:05:41 GMT Original-Received: from abhmt109.oracle.com (abhmt109.oracle.com [141.146.116.61]) by aserz7022.oracle.com (8.14.4+Sun/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r7TL5edf007246; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 21:05:40 GMT In-Reply-To: <87d2oww758.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Oracle Beehive Extensions for Outlook 2.0.1.8 (707110) [OL 12.0.6680.5000 (x86)] X-Source-IP: acsinet21.oracle.com [141.146.126.237] X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.4.x-2.6.x [generic] X-Received-From: 141.146.126.69 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:93159 Archived-At: > I agree the whole framework around the Emacs documentation is > great, apart from one thing, that you (or somebody else) possibly > can help me with: >=20 > When I bring up the help for find-file (just an example, this > happens all the time), some of the lines are too long. For > example, one line looks like this: >=20 > Interactively, [cut] type RET is the current director >=20 > That is, "y," has overflowed the width. Is there a way to "fill" > all help? I tried to manually change some of the docstrings with > line breaks ("\n", same as in C, or otherwise in Elisp > strings). That worked, but I'm not going to do that for each and > any function (or whatever). Doc strings are supposed to be shorter that some limit. (elisp) `Documentation Tips' says this: Format the documentation string so that it fits in an Emacs window on an 80-column screen. It is a good idea for most lines to be no wider than 60 characters. The first line should not be wider than 67 characters or it will look bad in the output of `apropos'. You can fill the text if that looks good. However, rather than blindly filling the entire documentation string, you can often make it much more readable by choosing certain line breaks with care. Use blank lines between sections if the documentation string is long. Likewise, *Help* output, in general. Wrt filling doc strings, see also user option `emacs-lisp-docstring-fill-column'. It sometimes happens that someone writes a doc string that is too wide. That is what `M-x report-emacs-bug' is for.