Re: new *Help* argument highlighting

[Juanma Barranquero <jmbarranquero@wke.es>]

On Mon, 10 May 2004 18:26:21 -0400
Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

> Still, it seems like a very nice way of presenting the arguments -- easy to
> read, less SHOUTY than the old method, and more consistent with the printed
> documentation[*].

Yes, I think is the best one suggested so far.

> I'd be happy if there was (as you suggested) a variable
> holding a filter-function that help would call to munge the args, which by
> default would downcase-and-italicize them.

That's my preferred solution too, so people can even do

(defun my-arg-highlight (arg)
  (propertize (downcase arg) 'display '(size (+ 1)) 'face '(:weight bold)))

which is not possible with a face.

> 99.9% of the users won't ever change either one, so I think the nicer
> display would be worth the small amount of added complexity for those who do
> want to change something.

Agreed.

Aside: for this to work, docstring writers still have to use the ALLCAPS
convention for arguments; I wonder if we could introduce (sometime after
21.[45], obviously :) a new (additional) convention to mark arguments in
the docstring, so less guesswork is needed. Of course, it wouldn't be
necessary to go back to change all existing docstrings (the current
guessing method would still work), but just adding the new convention to
a few complex ones would be a gain.

                                                                Juanma