Re: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: Philippe Vaucher <philippe.vaucher@gmail.com>,  tomas@tuxteam.de,
>   rms@gnu.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 02 May 2020 09:59:08 -0400
> 
> > If I may: your strategy is sub-optimal.  When looking for a function
> 
> FWIW, for me the problem is not to find the function but to remember
> which permuation we chose for the one I'm thinking of.
> 
> Typical examples: is it `multibyte-string-p` or `string-multibyte-p`,
> `file-name-absolute-p` or `absolute-file-name-p`, ... ?

Then "C-u C-h a WORDS..." is your friend.

> The regexp functions mentioned elsewhere in this thread are another good
> example

No, that's a different example, because a lot of regexp functions
don't have "regexp" in their names.

> Yes, we can try and improve completion, but we have a real underlying
> problem of irregular naming and completion would just help us paper
> over it.

The command "C-u C-h d regexp RET" brings up 111 matching functions.
Who will have patience looking through that list, unless the likely
candidates are near the beginning?  And this is even before we added
aliases that use the regexp- prefix.

> We don't have to rename anything.  We can keep living with what
> we have.  And we shouldn't rename the world either.  But I strongly
> believe that we *should* try and rename a few things here and there
> to slowly put more structure and order in our name space.

I don't object to this.  I'm just saying that the hope this will allow
you to quickly find that-function-you-almost-remember-the-name-of are
overly optimistic.  I'm also saying that in many use cases this will
make finding the right function harder (because the list of candidates
will become much longer).  But I personally don't care much, because I
never look for functions that way.