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Re: Search multiple Info-buffers at once with Info-occur function


From: dalanicolai
Subject: Re: Search multiple Info-buffers at once with Info-occur function
Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 10:56:17 +0200

So info-apropos searches all info-files on the system.
It would be handy to have a variant that searches only Emacs related info files
(or let you select a subset, like Info-occur does. But then info-occur additionally allows for narrowing further on context)

On Sun, 23 May 2021 at 10:39, dalanicolai <dalanicolai@gmail.com> wrote:
I did not know about the info-apropos command, which does not surprise me, given
that I find only two hits when googling for it and I find zero matches when
scanning the full emacs and elisp manuals (using my Info-occur command).
I would consider this/report this as a documentation bug (even though turned out to
be mentioned in the info manual)

Now, that you told me about it, using info-apropos, I indeed find that it is
mentioned once in the Info manual. I wish I knew about this command before (I
just knew about the various other apropos commands, but not this one)

Then, although the idea is the same, still there are some considerable differences

- as far as I know info-apropos can only scan ALL manuals, which can take very
long time to finish. (8.3 minutes !!! on my Spacemacs configuration. I used
[the macro posted here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23622296/emacs-timing-execution-of-function-calls-in-emacs-lisp)
to time it. I would vote for adding that macro to Emacs b.t.w., if there is not
some hidden alternative command already. It would be great to make use of some
indexing program like gnome-tracker/recoll for this, but that is a little far
fetched. We can already use such programs outside (and inside) of Emacs.)

- Info-occur lets you quickly jump through/preview the matches (it could also
present its results in helm/ivy/selectrum etc.)

- Info-occur lets you narrow down on context with additional terms (for example handy to
find back something you remember to have read somewhere)


So I think the Info-apropos command is not only a quite nice
alternative/addition to info-apropos but also to the current 'default'
Info-search functionality. (But having info-apropos makes having Info-occur
slightly less valuable indeed...)


On Sun, 23 May 2021 at 09:02, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> From: dalanicolai <dalanicolai@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 00:17:56 +0200
>
> When I started using Emacs, I often regretted that I could not search in multiple manuals at once (especially
> the Emacs and Elisp manuals).
> So now I have created an Info-occur command that allows you to select multiple manuals to search and
> present the results in a tablist buffer (tabular list extension for pdf-tools package).

Thanks, but how is this different from the existing command
info-apropos?

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