Re: how to open an uninstalled info file from within emacs

[Thomas F. Burdick]

"Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com> writes:

> On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, Jonas Steverud wrote:
> 
> > "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com> writes:
> > 
> > >   so, from within emacs, how can i open in info mode a specific
> > > info file that i've downloaded from the net?
> > 
> > C-u C-h i
> 
> ok, i'll bite -- why does adding the "C-u" universal argument on the front
> of "C-h i" cause this behavior?  it certainly isn't intuitive, at least
> not to me.  should i have guessed this somehow?

It is intuitive when you've internalized some of the logic of C-u, and
I originally found it by guessing -- but that's not to say I would've
expected J. Random Emacsuser to necessarily guess it.

For commands where a numeric argument makes sense, they generally take
a numeric argument as a repeat count.  For commands where a numeric
argument doesn't make sense, they generally give you an expanded
version of the command.  For C-s, this means using a regexp search.
For something like C-x C-f (when you're using ffap), this means
defaulting to whatever "thing" is right at or around the point.  For
something like C-h i, which has a default place to look (the system
info dir file), this means prompting you for a different place.

I found this originally by saying, "I want to look at this info file,
but C-h i is defaulting to the wrong place ... maybe an `expanded'
version of this would let me choose the default place".

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