From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Drew Adams Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: bug#46627: [External] : bug#46627: [PATCH] Add new help command 'describe-command' Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2021 21:34:21 +0000 Message-ID: References: <835z2o4fes.fsf@gnu.org> <83blcezntj.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="22842"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: "larsi@gnus.org" , "rms@gnu.org" , "46627@debbugs.gnu.org" <46627@debbugs.gnu.org> To: Eli Zaretskii , Stefan Kangas Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Feb 26 22:35:11 2021 Return-path: Envelope-to: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1lFklT-0005nN-Ij for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; 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Coming back to this, as I just happened to be reading Paul Graham's essay "Novelty and Heresy" today, and it rang a bell... http://paulgraham.com/nov.html > > AFAIR, Emacs never meant completion to be a means > > of discovery. The discovery was always meant to > > be through "apropos" commands. >=20 > Emacs never originally meant a lot of things that > were later expanded (or repurposed to some degree) > to advantage. This is normal for many processes > of change. > Exaptation: [Wikipedia URL] > Spandrel: [Wikipedia URL] >=20 > > > So the idea is to combine searching for commands > > > with looking up their documentation. > > > > I'm not sure this is a good idea, FWIW. For starters, > > it is limited: if you spot a command whose name sounds > > relevant, you have no simple way getting details about > > it. Unlike apropos commands, which do provide such ways. >=20 > "You have no such simple way" ... until you do. >From "Novelty and Heresy": One common way for a good idea to be non-obvious is for it to be hidden in the shadow of some mistaken assumption that people are very attached to. But anything you discover from working on such an idea will tend to contradict the mistaken assumption that was concealing it. And you will thus get a lot of heat from people attached to the mistaken assumption. ... This phenomenon [is] probably always an ingredient in the resistance to new ideas. ... Every cherished mistaken assumption has a dead zone of unexplored ideas around it. In this case, the usefulness of completion for discovery has been pointed out by several people. But it's _not_ the original intention for completion. As you put it, "Emacs never meant completion to be a means of discovery." And the legitimate, intended means of discovery in Emacs was apropos. But completion _is_, accidentally or not, a means to discovery - and it can be a good one. That original intention corresponds to a "mistaken assumption" in this context: the assumption that completion is not for discovery _because_ that isn't why it was added to Emacs (and something else was added to aid discovery). Saying that completion is, or it can be, useful for discovery? Heresy. The usefulness of 3rd-party code that has fruitfully explored the "dead zone" around the assumption that the only purpose of completion is to return completed input is pretty clear to those acquainted with it. The positive takeaway, beyond the case of using completion for discovery? The depressingly large dead zones around mistaken assumptions [can] become excitingly large mines of new ideas. That puts exaptation in an active light - it need not be an entirely accidental process.