help system question

help system question

[hbe123]

Hi.I'm a fairly new emacs user. When I access the "describe-function"
help command, I get a helpful screen that tells me about the function
and which file contains it. Like the following:
"buffer-menu is an interactive compiled Lisp function in '_buff-menu_'.

Because buff-menu is underlined, I think it is a link, and I position
the cursor over it and press Enter. The mini-buffer then gives me the
following message:
"The library 'buff-menu' is not in the path"

So what I am wondering is, is this a message that everyone gets,
perhaps because buff-menu is a compiled file, or is there something
wrong about my particular setup which is causing this error message?
Thanks.

Re: help system question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: hbe123@gmail.com
> Date: 27 Dec 2006 01:25:21 -0800
> 
> Because buff-menu is underlined, I think it is a link, and I position
> the cursor over it and press Enter. The mini-buffer then gives me the
> following message:
> "The library 'buff-menu' is not in the path"
> 
> So what I am wondering is, is this a message that everyone gets,
> perhaps because buff-menu is a compiled file, or is there something
> wrong about my particular setup which is causing this error message?

Please look inside the directory where buff-menu.elc is installed on
your system (if you don't know where that is, then the value of the
load-path variable will list all the possible places).  Do you see
buff-menu.el there?  If not, that is the cause of your problem:
whoever installed Emacs on your system removed the *.el files.

Btw, what version of Emacs is that?  ("M-x emacs-version RET" will
tell you, if you don't know.)

Re: help system question

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 27.12.2006 um 13:23 schrieb Eli Zaretskii:

> Please look inside the directory where buff-menu.elc is installed on
> your system (if you don't know where that is, then the value of the
> load-path variable will list all the possible places).  Do you see
> buff-menu.el there?  If not, that is the cause of your problem:
> whoever installed Emacs on your system removed the *.el files.

This seems to be a common praxis in Linux distributions! On some  
early Fedora Core I think I had the choice of two GNU Emacs packages:  
a lean one and a FAT one with all ELisp files ...

--
Greetings

   Pete

Wasting time is an important part of living.

Re: help system question

[H.]

> Please look inside the directory where buff-menu.elc is installed on
> your system (if you don't know where that is, then the value of the
> load-path variable will list all the possible places).  Do you see
> buff-menu.el there?  If not, that is the cause of your problem:
> whoever installed Emacs on your system removed the *.el files.
>
> Btw, what version of Emacs is that?  ("M-x emacs-version RET" will
> tell you, if you don't know.)

Thanks. I see the problem now. I'm a student at UC Berkeley, and using
a version of cygwin provided internally which contains only a subset of
gnu emacs. To prevent these kind of snafus in the future, I am now
going to download a full and recent version.

btw, the version listed is:
GNU Emacs 21.2.1 (i686-pc-cygwin, X-toolkit) of 2004-03-22 on cm-test

Re: help system question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "H." <hbe123@gmail.com>
> Date: 27 Dec 2006 05:55:36 -0800
> 
> btw, the version listed is:
> GNU Emacs 21.2.1 (i686-pc-cygwin, X-toolkit) of 2004-03-22 on cm-test

That is quite old: v21.4 is the last released version, with 22.1
coming up shortly (and should already be available in pretest
versions).

Re: help system question

[Robert Thorpe]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: "H." <hbe123@gmail.com>
> > Date: 27 Dec 2006 05:55:36 -0800
> >
> > btw, the version listed is:
> > GNU Emacs 21.2.1 (i686-pc-cygwin, X-toolkit) of 2004-03-22 on cm-test
>
> That is quite old: v21.4 is the last released version, with 22.1
> coming up shortly (and should already be available in pretest
> versions).

Just a suggestion:
Lots of people seem to have versions of Emacs 22 themselves, and don't
seem to know that it hasn't been officially released.  So people might
think there is little difference between the Emacs22 they have and the
finished one called 22.1.  So, it might be a good idea to give the new
version a higher version number.

Re: help system question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
> Date: 31 Dec 2006 13:00:58 -0800
> 
> Lots of people seem to have versions of Emacs 22 themselves, and don't
> seem to know that it hasn't been officially released.  So people might
> think there is little difference between the Emacs22 they have and the
> finished one called 22.1.  So, it might be a good idea to give the new
> version a higher version number.

I don't see a problem here (or misunderstand you): the current Emacs
22 versions are numbered 22.0.NN, so when 22.1 is released, they will
know it's newer.

Re: help system question

[Robert Thorpe]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
> > Date: 31 Dec 2006 13:00:58 -0800
> >
> > Lots of people seem to have versions of Emacs 22 themselves, and don't
> > seem to know that it hasn't been officially released.  So people might
> > think there is little difference between the Emacs22 they have and the
> > finished one called 22.1.  So, it might be a good idea to give the new
> > version a higher version number.
>
> I don't see a problem here (or misunderstand you): the current Emacs
> 22 versions are numbered 22.0.NN, so when 22.1 is released, they will
> know it's newer.

Yes, but the implication is that it's only 0.5 of a version number
newer.  That doesn't indicate that the official v22.1 should be
significantly more bug tested than 22.0.NN ones were.

Re: help system question

[Kevin Rodgers]

Robert Thorpe wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
>>> Date: 31 Dec 2006 13:00:58 -0800
>>>
>>> Lots of people seem to have versions of Emacs 22 themselves, and don't
>>> seem to know that it hasn't been officially released.  So people might
>>> think there is little difference between the Emacs22 they have and the
>>> finished one called 22.1.  So, it might be a good idea to give the new
>>> version a higher version number.
>> I don't see a problem here (or misunderstand you): the current Emacs
>> 22 versions are numbered 22.0.NN, so when 22.1 is released, they will
>> know it's newer.
> 
> Yes, but the implication is that it's only 0.5 of a version number
> newer.  That doesn't indicate that the official v22.1 should be
> significantly more bug tested than 22.0.NN ones were.

That's exactly what it indicates: the 22.0.NN versions are pretest
versions (the most recent NN is 92), and 22.1 will be available
when the release criteria are met.

-- 
Kevin

Re: help system question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
> Date: 1 Jan 2007 05:00:40 -0800
> >
> > I don't see a problem here (or misunderstand you): the current Emacs
> > 22 versions are numbered 22.0.NN, so when 22.1 is released, they will
> > know it's newer.
> 
> Yes, but the implication is that it's only 0.5 of a version number
> newer.

No, it's one minor version newer.  Micro version numbers are reserved
for different builds of the same version.

> That doesn't indicate that the official v22.1 should be
> significantly more bug tested than 22.0.NN ones were.

Who said it's significantly more bug-free?  As someone who
participates in Emacs pretests since v19.30, I cannot in good faith
say that the official version is so much more stable than the pretest
one.

Re: help system question

[Robert Thorpe]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>
> > That doesn't indicate that the official v22.1 should be
> > significantly more bug tested than 22.0.NN ones were.
>
> Who said it's significantly more bug-free?  As someone who
> participates in Emacs pretests since v19.30, I cannot in good faith
> say that the official version is so much more stable than the pretest
> one.

I see.  In that case v22.1 is a reasonable version number to use.

I mentioned this because often projects write great extra features but
their users only find out years/months later when they upgrade to
another new version.  This is because the authors have only incremented
the version number by a small amount the first time, so users don't
notice.  That doesn't sound like what's happening here though.