bug#10868: 24.0.93; `comment-style' needs to be explained

[Lawrence Mitchell <wence@gmx.li>]

Glenn Morris wrote:
> Lawrence Mitchell wrote:

>> The docstring of comment-style refers the user to comment-styles for
>> details on what the values mean.  However, this is not available until
>> after newcomment.el is loaded.  So autoload comment-styles to avoid
>> this problem.

> Then this is an instance of a general problem. See eg
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=1768
> for the same thing.

> IMO there should be a general solution rather than papering over every
> instance that occurs with more pre/autoloading.

Sure, but you can't do this, right?  You don't know where the
variable is defined until /after/ the file it's defined in is
loaded.  Sure, you can guess that links in a docstring for a
variable that is autoloaded from package foo may also lead to
other variables in package foo, but that's not foolproof.

I guess the help system could load the file of autoloaded
variables when showing their docstring, but people are bound to
complain about that too.

Lawrence