if can't find man page, prompt for another

if can't find man page, prompt for another

[Dan Jacobson]

M-x man gnupg
Loading man...done
Invoking man gnupg in the background
Please wait: making up the gnupg man page...
gnupg man page made up
error in process sentinel: Man-goto-page: Can't find the gnupg manpage
error in process sentinel: Can't find the gnupg manpage

OK, how about here prompting me for a different man page, instead of
having me type in
M-x man (gpg) again.
True in the shell we don't get such pampering, but a ^P and we are
back in action.  In emacs it is an ESC x ESC p RET ... etc.
Anyways the current feeling is one has caused a big error and all the
wheels fall off and you are left there sitting in the middle of the
street.  There is even a flash or beep to make you feel more silly:
oh, Jenkins on the terminal in row 4 committed another error.
Instead my approach brings the warmth of mom to the user: no Jenkins,
you are not wrong.  It is the tool providers fault for the confusing
man page name which you didn't remember.  Here, have a prompt, and try
again. 
-- 
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780

Re: if can't find man page, prompt for another

[Francesco Potorti`]

   Please wait: making up the gnupg man page...
   gnupg man page made up
   error in process sentinel: Man-goto-page: Can't find the gnupg manpage
   error in process sentinel: Can't find the gnupg manpage
   
   OK, how about here prompting me for a different man page, instead of
   having me type in M-x man (gpg) again.

This is a good idea, in my opinion.  It was me that originally wrote the
code that signals an error.  But sorry, I have not the time now to make
the necessary (small) changes to implement Dan's idea.

Re: if can't find man page, prompt for another

[Miles Bader]

pot@gnu.org (Francesco Potorti`) writes:
>    OK, how about here prompting me for a different man page, instead of
>    having me type in M-x man (gpg) again.
> 
> This is a good idea, in my opinion.

I'm not so sure; it could also be annoying.

In my experience, it's much more common for M-x man to fail because
there _is_ no man page for a program, not because I typed something
wrong.  Re-prompting is just a waste of time in that case.  I also think
that it's a good general rule for a command to have a single consistent
terminating state, error or no; it's simply less surprising for the
user.

-Miles
-- 
I'd rather be consing.

Re: if can't find man page, prompt for another

[Richard Stallman]

    This is a good idea, in my opinion.  It was me that originally wrote the
    code that signals an error.  But sorry, I have not the time now to make
    the necessary (small) changes to implement Dan's idea.

I agree with Miles--this change would be a bad idea.  We won't make
this change.