From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
To: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: help-fns.el patch for commands to describe options and commands
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:57:45 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1IjFlp-0003hK-4s@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <DHEEKFAFJEFOJHLCFPFDGENICBAA.drew.adams@oracle.com>
Attached is a patch for help-fns.el. It modifies `describe-function' and
`describe-variable', so that a prefix arg means that candidates are commands
and user options, respectively. So `C-u C-h f' shows and accepts only
commands as completion candidates, and `C-u C-h v' shows and accepts only
user options for completion.
That doesn't sound very useful to me. What is the benefit it seeks to provide?
Only to limit completion?
I won't object to installing it, but I do not want to document it in
the Emacs Manual, because it isn't worth the paper.
In addition, for convenience, two new commands are defined to do the same
thing without `C-u': `describe-command' and `describe-option'. This is
especially useful for newbies, who might search for something that describes
a command or an option.
I don't think this is is going to be useful for newbies. They won't
learn these commands. If they remember anything relevant it will be
C-h f and C-h v. C-h f works with commands just as with
noninteractive functions; C-h v works with user options just as with
other variables.
If you are saying that you think some newbies will type M-x
describe-command to look for a command, I think that will be quite
rare. If we want to make that work, the simplest way is to alias
describe-command to describe-function.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2007-10-20 14:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-10-19 19:06 help-fns.el patch for commands to describe options and commands Drew Adams
2007-10-20 1:46 ` Miles Bader
2007-10-20 14:57 ` Richard Stallman [this message]
2007-10-20 16:59 ` Drew Adams
2007-10-21 2:09 ` Stefan Monnier
2007-10-21 2:22 ` Drew Adams
2007-10-21 2:46 ` Miles Bader
2007-10-21 2:57 ` Drew Adams
2007-10-21 16:26 ` Richard Stallman
2007-10-21 5:25 ` William Xu
2007-10-21 6:02 ` Drew Adams
2007-10-22 9:00 ` Richard Stallman
2007-10-22 9:15 ` William Xu
2007-10-21 16:26 ` Richard Stallman
2007-10-21 17:30 ` Drew Adams
2007-10-23 7:12 ` Richard Stallman
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