RE: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Drew Adams]

> When looking for a function
> whose name you don't know, the first place to look is in the ELisp
> manual.  Thus, for finding functions that deal with alists, the first
> thing to try is "i alist RET" in the ELisp manual.  Here "alist" is
> not a part of a function's name, it's a topic which you are looking
> for.  That is much more efficient than the sequence you described
> above, because we take special care of having meaningful topics in the
> indices of the manual, precisely to help in such situations.  (And my
> advice is to always have the ELisp manual shown in some frame on your
> display, so that you don't even need to type "C-h i" etc. to get to
> it.)

I agree with Eli about this.  ` i' in a manual is
your friend.

However, that's usable only for functions etc. in
the vanilla code distributed with Emacs.  Maybe
that's all Philippe is interested in this case;
maybe not.

If a user wants a function that acts on or returns
an alist, and wants to include functions that are
not part of vanilla Emacs, then the interactive
help, not the manuals, are the answer.