Re: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Philippe Vaucher <philippe.vaucher@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 2 May 2020 12:11:10 +0200
> Cc: tomas@tuxteam.de, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>, Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
>  And if it wasn't clear: "C-h f" is for looking up a function whose
>  name you already know.  Which is AFAIU not the case in your original
>  use case.
> 
> My original use case is: I want to copy an association list, I know the function will probably have "copy" in its
> name and "alist", let's C-h f for "alist TAB" and fail because no results. Start again with "copy TAB" and filter
> the lots of "copy-*" function until I find copy-alist.

"C-u C-h a copy alist RET" finds that function as the single hit.  As
does "C-u C-h a alist copy RET".

> Now imagine if this particual function was named "asscpy"
> instead how frustrated I'd be :-)

You will be frustrated because you use the wrong command.  "C-h f" is
not your friend unless you have a very good idea of the function's
name.  That's why "apropos" family of commands were invented: to help
you find something you don't know by name.  There's a best tool for
each job, and "C-h f" is not a good tool for this job.

But I already said that, several times.  And since you still disagree,
then I must insist that my response to Richard was spot-on: he asked
why doesn't "C-h d" do the job, and my response was, in a nutshell,
that what "C-h d" does is not relevant for you and other users who
think and are accustomed to work like you do.  You disagreed with my
conclusion, but we now made one more full circle, and established that
my conclusion was correct after all.

> Also imagine how self-documenting and self-discoverable Emacs Lisp would
> be if things where properly namespaced, like we ask for all packages to be on MELPA/ELPA and friends.

I'm not objected to have aliases that would make it easier to find out
the function's name using simple completion, but I think you greatly
overestimate the usefulness of that in many practical situations.
Meanwhile there are existing features designed specifically for these
use cases, which do their job much more efficiently _today_, and you
choose to disregard them or treat them as second-class citizens.  I
think it's a mistake, but I can only make suggestions and point out
that those features do exist.

> As said earlier, probably that my way of thinking is not common around here, but I'd not be surprised if it was
> common for many developpers, maybe outside Emacs Lisp.

My earnest advice for those developers is to try the features I
mentioned, they might find them useful in situations similar to the
one you described, and they might then decide to use them more than
what they do today.