Re: My emacs was upgraded and I am a novice again

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:56:06 +0100
> From: "Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> > Instead of inventing new machinery, how about enhancing the existing
> > one?  "C-h P" is supposed to use the index you seem to think about.
> 
> Good example, both counts.
> No sign of revert (even if I understood it to mean reload).

Sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about: what revert?

If you are looking for the place to learn Emacs parlance, there's the
"Glossary" node in the manual (which does explain "revert").

If you are looking for a way to find the command revert-buffer using
keywords or phrases pertinent to what it should do, then
"apropos-documentation" is your man, and "Info-index" in Info is your
friend.  (I'm not saying that these two will necessarily find what you
are looking for, but if you name here the words or phrases that you
use or would think to use for what revert-buffer does, I can try to
make sure that those words/phrases will find the relevant commands in
the future releases of Emacs.)

In short, please spell out what are the use cases you are thinking
about, because it looks like we are talking about several different
ones here, with possibly different solutions to each one of them.

> And I'd never heard of C-h P. As I said, I'd need to know the magic
> word 'revert' to find revert. That's the index I think is missing.

I thought you were asking for finding packages by keywords (and I
thought Tom Tromey was talking about something like that as well):

Dave> > Ideas for an 'index' please? What form? Its the match of 'idea/usage'
Dave> > vs package name/variable/mode. Generally once you have the key words,
Dave> > emacs is sufficiently helpful?

Tom> Stefan> I've been an Emacs maintainer for what... 10 years?  I still
Tom> Stefan> occasionally bump into a bundled *package* that I've never
Tom> Stefan> heard of.
Tom> 
Tom> Most long-time Emacs users I talk to have a similar experience.  I
Tom> think this is one of the great joys of Emacs.
Tom> 
Tom> On the minus side, discoverability remains a problem.  Sometimes I
Tom> wish I'd found those features years earlier.

That is why I pointed out that an index of Emacs packages already
exists, and it is what "C-h P" consults to do its job.

Now I see that I need to add several more indices to the list:

 . The index in the Info manual (search it by the `i' command)

 . The virtual index produced by "apropos" and "apropos-documentation"

 . The "Glossary" node in the Emacs manual