bug#10785: 24.0.93; Doc of display-buffer doesn't explain alists

bug#10785: 24.0.93; Doc of display-buffer doesn't explain alists

[Michael Heerdegen]

Hello,

the docstring of `display-buffer' mentions certain "alists" in several
places, but doesn't say at all how they must look like and what an
effect they have.

Also most of the docstrings of the variables mentioned there
don't explain their purpose, like `display-buffer-alist':

  ACTION is a cons cell (FUNCTION . ALIST), where FUNCTION is a
  function or a list of functions.  Each such function should
  accept two arguments: a buffer to display and an alist of the
  same form as ALIST.  See `display-buffer' for details.

It's all quite cyclic.


Michael.





In GNU Emacs 24.0.93.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.2.3)
 of 2012-02-08 on zelenka, modified by Debian
 (emacs-snapshot package, version 2:20120208-1)
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11103901
Configured using:
 `configure '--build' 'i486-linux-gnu' '--host' 'i486-linux-gnu'
 '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib'
 '--localstatedir=/var' '--infodir=/usr/share/info'
 '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes'
 '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs-snapshot:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/24.0.93/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/24.0.93/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp'
 '--without-compress-info' '--with-crt-dir=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/'
 '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk3' '--with-imagemagick=yes'
 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu'
 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -DSITELOAD_PURESIZE_EXTRA=5000 -g -O2''

bug#10785: 24.0.93; Doc of display-buffer doesn't explain alists

[Chong Yidong]

Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> writes:

> the docstring of `display-buffer' mentions certain "alists" in several
> places, but doesn't say at all how they must look like and what an
> effect they have.

They are arbitrary association lists, and their effect is left up to the
function arguments.  I tweaked the docstring to clarify this.