RE: describe-bindings: ^L, bad order, naming

[Drew Adams]

       > The ^L is there so that one could use forward-page to
       > quickly move to the next group.

       That's great, but it shouldn't be displayed.

    If the ^L is not displayed, how do you know that forward-page will
    move you there?

`forward-page' looks for the character ^L (control L, form-feed).  Wouldn't
Eli's overlay suggestion give a better appearance and still leave the ^L in
the buffer for `forward-page' to find and the printer to interpret as a
form-feed?

    More importantly, what the ^L is _really_ there for is to force a page
    break if the user prints the stuff off.  Obviously, it should be
    displayed as is, because the user printing it off should know that
    there is going a page break there.

I think the display in a buffer can be made independent of what character is
actually there. The suggestion was to leave the control-L character there,
but display it as, for example, a horizontal line (perhaps with some space
before and after it). That would still let the user know that the printer
would make a page break (provided the convention were explained, as is also
needed to understand that seeing "^L" means a page break).

       > We could use overlays to display the ^L as something more visually
       > appealing, while leaving ^L in the buffer.

    Definitely not, for the reasons above.  If there is a ^L in the buffer,
    the user needs to know that.

I don't see those reasons. The user needs to see a section delimiter; that's
all. He need not see "^L" (which is just one representation of a form-feed
character, anyway). I think what people are saying is that the form-feed
character should be kept in the buffer, but it should be displayed as
something more user-friendly.