changes on “info” function in emacs 23

changes on “info” function in emacs 23

[Xah Lee]

in emacs 22, when in info inside emacs, if i press “c”, i get the node
info in my kill ring, for example:

(elisp)System Environment

But in emacs 23, i get:

(elisp) System Environment

is there any explanation or doc about this change? I don't see it in
the NEWS file.

this seems important to me because programatically, i can do eval in
elisp:

(info "(elisp) System Environment")

to get emacs to display the node.
It still works with or without the space, but would like to read about
this change.

thanks.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: changes on “info” function in emacs 23

[A.Politz]

On Aug 5, 1:26 am, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It still works with or without the space, but would like to read about
> this change.
>
> thanks.
>
>   Xah

* Added one space to the output of some info function, thought it
might look better.

Now you've done it, feel free to merge this line with your NEWS file.
BTW
C-0 c
, even more news.

-ap

Re: changes on “info” function in emacs 23

[Xah Lee]

On Aug 4, 6:39 pm, "A.Politz" <poli...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 5, 1:26 am, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It still works with or without the space, but would like to read about
> > this change.
>
> > thanks.
>
> >   Xah
>
> * Added one space to the output of some info function, thought it
> might look better.
>
> Now you've done it, feel free to merge this line with your NEWS file.
> BTW
> C-0 c
> , even more news.
>
> -ap

the change actually broke one of my elisp function. I have a command
that when invoked, will turn the current line like

(emacs)dired

into

<span class="ref">(info "(emacs)dired")</span>

now it broke! lol. (yeah it can be fixed in few secs)

But anyway, i did some testing, at least this extra space change is
backward compatible. e.g.

(info "(emacs)dired")
(info "(emacs) dired")

both works in emacs 22.

However, i noticed another, more important issue. In emacs 22, there's
this node:

(info "(emacs)Transient Mark")

but doesn't exit in emacs 23's manual.

Shouldn't the manual nodes be persistant across versions, e.g.
providing redirect when node changed?

as a pratical matter, this means now i have to search all my tutorial
that points to manual nodes and check if they still work. This applies
to any publication on emacs that reference to the manual by node.

this is a problem with python manual too... thinking about this,
actually i don't know if there are any manual that:

(1) provide a computable reference to the chapter/sections.
(2) maintain this on different versions of the manual.

However, since emacs does (1) already, it's easy to do (2) too.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: changes on “info” function in emacs 23

[Xah Lee]

wrote a clean summary on this issue:

• Emacs Manual Node Persistency Issues
  http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_manual_persistent_nodes.html

plain text version follows:
--------------------------------------------------

Emacs Manual Node Persistency Issues

Xah Lee, 2009-08-08

This page is a short note about emacs manual's node's persistency
across manual versions.

2 issues are noted here:

    * (1) Emacs Lisp function “info-copy-Current-node-name” changed
its output slightly, between emacs 22 and emacs 23.

    * (2) Emacs manual node entries are not persistent across manual
versions, this creates a problem of “bad link” references in existing
literature.

--------------------
info-copy-current-node-name

In emacs 22, when in info inside emacs, if i press “c” (info-copy-
current-node-name), i get the node name in my kill ring (aka clip
board), for example:

(elisp)System Environment

But in emacs 23, i get:

(elisp) System Environment

This change is not documented in the emacs 23 release notes (aka NEWS
file).

This change actually broke one of my personal elisp command. My
command turns a line of the form:

(emacs)dired

into

<span class="ref">(info "(emacs)dired")</span>

Note: This is a trivial issue. My command can be trivially fixed. This
section only record a elisp command's undocumented behavior change
that actually broke a user's code (me).

Note: however, this change did not break backward compatibility with
emacs 22. I've tested, that in emacs 22, both with or without the
extra space works.

--------------------
Info Node Persistency

A more important issue i just discovered is that some info node in
emacs 22 are gone in emacs 23.

In emacs 22, there's this node:

(info "(emacs)Transient Mark")

but it does not exit in emacs 23's manual.

Shouldn't the manual nodes be persistant across versions, e.g.
providing redirect when node changed?

As a pratical matter, this means now i have to search my emacs
publications to fix the nodes. A task that's not particularly trivial.
This applies to any publication on emacs that reference to the manual
by node.

This is a problem with Python's documentation too. thinking about
this, actually i don't know if there are any manual that:

    * (1) Provide a computable reference to the chapter/sections.
    * (2) Maintain this on different versions of the manual.

However, since emacs does (1) already, it's easy to do (2) too.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄