Re: q doesn't always quit *Help*

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > Thanks for working on this. I won't be able to spend a lot of time on this,
 > but I'll try to help a bit. I guess you're saying that I should start with
 > the source files that are in the distributed Emacs 22.1, and not with the
 > source files in cvs - is that right?

The patch is against the latest CVS Emacs 22 aka EMACS_22_BASE.

 > I assumed so, and I took a look wrt the bug I just reported. The problem is
 > that the code seems complex, and there are apparently lots of different ways
 > to interact with it. It's possible that a fix might take care of what I
 > reported but either not fix other problems or even introduce new problems. I
 > won't have the time to deal with all of that, but I will check whether your
 > fix takes care of what I reported.

I haven't done anything on this for a month so _any_ feedback is mostly
welcome.

 > [BTW, the fact that a fix to something like this needs to touch eight (!)
 > Lisp files is aa suggestion that the View code is too complex and poorly
 > designed, IMO. It's not a sure indication of poor design, but it is a hint.
 > A (superficially simple) UI fix such as this should ideally be a local fix.]

The View code is not bad (most of my changes regard doc-strings only).
There are two basic problems: (1) The `with-output-to-temp-buffer' /
`print-help-return-message' combination relies on the latter to
_anticipate_ what `display-buffer' is going to do in the current
frame+window configuration.  This is hardly feasible.  (2) The
`view-exit-action' hack is a pain because it overrides the carefully
laid out design of View mode.

 > I patched the Emacs 22.1 sources I have (from the distrib), but faces.el
 > does not seem right.

Ignore it for the moment, all but help.el, help-mode.el, and view.el are
here to show how this should be implemented.  One of them is sufficient
to demonstrate the behavior.

 > The version in the distrib already has some of the
 > changes your patch makes. For instance, it has no `face-normalize-spec', so
 > that cannot be removed, and the later change that involves this has
 > apparently already been applied in the distrib version. So the patch for
 > faces.el confuses me. I applied the part of it that made sense. Similarly,
 > there was a bit of view.el that had apparently already been changed before
 > the distrib.
 >
 > [BTW, is there some way to apply a patch other than by hand (copy+paste)?
 > I've been doing it by hand, and it takes quite a while (and is error
 > prone).]

You don't use `ediff-patch-buffer/-file' e.g. from the Tools / Apply
Patch menu?

 > I tried with the patched files: emacs -Q, then loaded each patched file. The
 > bug is fixed. Thx.
 >
 > However, in my own Emacs environment, where I have pop-up-frames = t and
 > where *Help* is a special-display frame, `q' iconifies the *Help* frame,
 > which is awful. I want it to simply call `quit-window' (which in fact
 > deletes the frame in my case).

`quit-window' deletes the frame iff it's a minibuffer-window - which
should not hold here - or it's a dedicated window - do you set that?
But I agree that the behavior you describe is logical and desirable (as
long as you never display anything else in that window).  Hence, I have
to invent something here.  Did you try this with `help-window-select'
customized?