Re: new apropos feature in Emacs-22

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

   This feature (and any ad-hoc rules it implements) was discussed at
   length around the time the feature was added.  Please be sure to read
   those discussions before you suggest to change the decisions made back
   then.

Nothing in that discussion changes the fact that:

   (string-equal (regexp-quote regexp) regexp)

is just a horrible way to distinguish a regexp from a list of keywords.

The prompt string of the apropos commands says: (regexp or words).
Which of the two and how do I choose?  The docstrings all say that it
matches a regexp and do not mention keywords at all.

To the person who wants to use a regexp, it is confusing that
`M-x apropos-documentation RET font lock RET" produces tons of
unexpected matches and unexpected highlighting.

To the person who reads the Emacs manual and knows nothing about
regexps, it is even a lot more confusing that things like:

M-x apropos-documentation RET *scratch* buffer RET

does not find any matches, even though there are several places matching
both keywords.

Things like:

M-x apropos-documentation RET .emacs init RET

are probably even worse, since _some_ matches are actually displayed,
but not the ones the user may be trying to find.

Sincerely,

Luc.