bug#8232: 23.3; Help shows key bindings as they are in the *Help* buffer, which is confusing

bug#8232: 23.3; Help shows key bindings as they are in the *Help* buffer, which is confusing

[Reuben Thomas]

Example:

C-h f transient-mark-mode RET

Some of the text shown is:

but whose main purpose is something else--for example,
incremental search, <, and >.

I thought “what does it mean, < and >?” I looked up the source:

but whose main purpose is something else--for example,
incremental search, \\[beginning-of-buffer], and \\[end-of-buffer].

Aha! I thought, those must be the bindings in help-mode. I never even
knew those bindings existed!

However, this is rather confusing, because the user called up help in
the context of some other major mode, so expects to see the bindings for
that major mode.


In GNU Emacs 23.3.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.22.0)
 of 2011-03-02 on canta
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10900000
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_GB.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Help

Minor modes in effect:
  diff-auto-refine-mode: t
  recentf-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  savehist-mode: t
  minibuffer-electric-default-mode: t
  iswitchb-mode: t
  icomplete-mode: t
  global-whitespace-mode: t
  global-auto-revert-mode: t
  desktop-save-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  view-mode: t

Recent input:
n d - o f - b u f f e r <return> C-h f t r a n s i 
e n t - m a r k - m o d e <return> C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-e C-b C-b 
C-b C-b C-b C-b C-b C-b C-b C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-a C-n C-n C-p C-f C-f <return> C-x C-f f 
o r SPC C-a C-g C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-x 
o < > < > < > C-x C-z <switch-frame> C-x b <return> 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n M-x r e p o r t 
- e m a c s - b u g <return>

Recent messages:
Mark saved where search started
Mark set
Quit
Type "q" to restore this window.
call-interactively: Text is read-only
Grep finished (matches found)
uncompressing simple.el.gz...done
Note: file is write protected
Quit
Mark set [6 times]

Load-path shadows:
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/popup hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auto-complete/popup
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/fuzzy hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auto-complete/fuzzy
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/css-mode/css-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/link hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/dictionary-el/link
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/connection hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/dictionary-el/connection
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/dictionary-init hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/dictionary-el/dictionary-init
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/dictionary hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/dictionary-el/dictionary
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/dict hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/emacs-goodies-el/dict
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/lisp/textmodes/css-mode
/usr/share/emacs-snapshot/site-lisp/ruby1.8-elisp/ruby-mode hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/lisp/progmodes/ruby-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/css-mode/css-mode
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/context-en hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-en
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/dictionary-el/lpath hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/lpath
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/context hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr message sendmail ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec
password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse rfc2231
rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util netrc
time-date mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils mailheader canlock hashcash
mail-utils emacsbug find-func pp log-edit dired grep compile add-log tmm
electric sh-script executable vc-arch vc-mtn vc-hg vc-sccs vc-svn
inform-mode tar-mode jka-compr diff-git diff-mode newcomment time-stamp
tex-info texinfo tex vc-annotate log-view pcvs-util vc-rcs vc
vc-dispatcher parse-time vc-cvs help-mode view multi-isearch autoconf
autoconf-mode sgml-mode nxml-uchnm rng-xsd xsd-regexp rng-cmpct rng-nxml
rng-valid rng-loc rng-uri rng-parse nxml-parse rng-match rng-dt rng-util
rng-pttrn nxml-ns nxml-mode nxml-outln nxml-rap nxml-util nxml-glyph
nxml-enc xmltok cperl-mode vc-bzr sha1 hex-util vc-git face-remap
filladapt flyspell make-mode completing-help recentf tree-widget
wid-edit uniquify paren savehist minibuf-eldef iswitchb icomplete
whitespace autorevert time cus-start cus-load desktop server php-mode
etags cc-langs cc-mode cc-fonts cc-menus cc-cmds cc-styles cc-align
cc-engine cc-vars cc-defs speedbar sb-image ezimage dframe lua-mode
regexp-opt comint ring ropemacs pymacs smart-quotes ffap ispell
auto-dictionary-autoloads c-eldoc-autoloads css-mode-autoloads
dictionary-autoloads diff-git-autoloads dired-isearch-autoloads
full-ack-autoloads guess-style-autoloads javascript-autoloads
kill-ring-search-autoloads lambdacalc-autoloads magit-autoloads
mv-shell-autoloads tumble-autoloads http-post-simple-autoloads package
reporter advice advice-preload yasnippet help-fns derived edmacro kmacro
easymenu assoc cl cl-19 muse-autoloads emacs-goodies-el
emacs-goodies-custom emacs-goodies-loaddefs easy-mmode bbdb-autoloads
preview-latex tex-site auto-loads tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks
lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd font-setting tool-bar dnd fontset
image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select
scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core
frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai
tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european
ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help
simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces cus-face files
text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom
widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process dbusbind
system-font-setting font-render-setting gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org/

bug#8232: 23.3; Help shows key bindings as they are in the *Help* buffer, which is confusing

[martin rudalics]

 > C-h f transient-mark-mode RET
 >
 > Some of the text shown is:
 >
 > but whose main purpose is something else--for example,
 > incremental search, <, and >.

When I do this with emacs -Q in *scratch* it shows

   but whose main purpose is something else--for example,
   incremental search, M-<, and M->.

I suppose that for some reason your buffer was in view-mode at the time
you typed C-h f - maybe you can try to find out why.  In any case,
`describe-function-1' should operate on the orginal buffer where you
issued C-h f.

martin

bug#8232: 23.3; Help shows key bindings as they are in the *Help* buffer, which is confusing

[Reuben Thomas]

On 12 March 2011 17:09, martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at> wrote:
>
> When I do this with emacs -Q in *scratch* it shows
>
>  but whose main purpose is something else--for example,
>  incremental search, M-<, and M->.

Argh, I seem to have messed up here. Sorry for the noise. (I get the
same result as you.)

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org