Re: Fontless Info

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

'Evening, Drew!

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 09:58:31AM -0800, Drew Adams wrote:
> But the definition of `global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers' has not changed
> since before this regression was introduced, AFAICT.  Nothing in its file,
> font-core.el, was changed.

> It is the definition of `define-globalized-minor-mode' that was changed,
> radically it seems.

> `C-h f global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers' shows no doc string but tells us it
> is a compiled function in `font-core.el'.  There is however no explicit
> definition of it in that file.  It is created by `define-globalized-minor-mode'.


> Our help system sends the user on a wild goose chase here.  S?he has no hope of
> reorientation and finding a way out of the swamp.  You can't get there from
> here.

I agree with you, here.  However, that info, "font-core.el" needs to be
in the C-h f somewhere, since that is where the macro invocation is that
generated `global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers'.  But information is
missing, more precisely, that that defun was generated by the macro
define-globalized-minor-mode.

May I suggest, even request, that you specify what the information from
C-h f should look like, and perhaps even extend the infrastructure to
implement it.

> Emacs seems to be little-by-little losing its character of being
> self-documenting, by the use more and more of macros that generate functions
> without doc.  And by the use more and more of `defstruct' without providing doc
> for accessor etc. functions.  Dommage.

> At the very least (and no, it would by no means be a substitute for documenting
> the resulting objects themselves), the doc for `define-globalized-minor-mode'
> should mention the objects that it creates, such as function
> `MODE-check-buffers'.

This is partly done, in that a doc string for the global minor mode
function is generated, even if not for the helper functions.

> > Since the voodoo of easy-mmode is beyond me, I'll let others fix this.

> Hear, hear.  "Easy", indeed.  Easy for those defining things, perhaps.  Hard on
> Emacs users.  Dommage.

Shame indeed, but not beyond repair.

Good night!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).