emacs-devel
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Suggestion: Let the help command load autoloaded functions etc


From: Lennart Borgman (gmail)
Subject: Re: Suggestion: Let the help command load autoloaded functions etc
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:20:23 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071031 Thunderbird/2.0.0.9 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666

Jason Rumney wrote:
Lennart Borgman (gmail) wrote:
Richard Stallman wrote:
    Wouldn't it be good if the help functions loaded autoloaded
functions     etc? At least I believe this would make it a bit less
confusing for     newbies. And the penalty should not be big, or?

These functions give information about Emacs.  I think it would be
very undesirable for them to alter the state they are examining.
But loading a library should not change the state of Emacs, or? Is not
that one of the design goals?

Of course loading a library changes the state of Emacs. At very least,
it increases the memory footprint.
What benefit do you suppose would be gained from doing this?

A few things:

- Argument list
- Correct doc string
- Links in doc string

But, yes, one might think that the state changes are a bit too big. However this is the same state change is the same as you get when you customize something from the library in question.

A little milder suggestion just because it is close to X-max: How about adding a link that loads the library, something like replacing

 [Arg list not available until function definition is loaded.]

with

 [Arg list not available, _click to load function library_.]

for an autoloaded function?




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]