Re: My emacs was upgraded and I am a novice again

[Dave Pawson]

On 22/09/2007, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:56:06 +0100
> > From: "Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>
> > Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> >
> > > Instead of inventing new machinery, how about enhancing the existing
> > > one?  "C-h P" is supposed to use the index you seem to think about.
> >
> > Good example, both counts.
> > No sign of revert (even if I understood it to mean reload).
>
> Sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about: what revert?

The minor mode that resolved the issue at the top of this thread, for Steve?
auto-revert-mode

>
> If you are looking for the place to learn Emacs parlance, there's the
> "Glossary" node in the manual (which does explain "revert").
>
> If you are looking for a way to find the command revert-buffer using
> keywords or phrases pertinent to what it should do, then
> "apropos-documentation" is your man, and "Info-index" in Info is your
> friend.  (I'm not saying that these two will necessarily find what you
> are looking for, but if you name here the words or phrases that you
> use or would think to use for what revert-buffer does, I can try to
> make sure that those words/phrases will find the relevant commands in
> the future releases of Emacs.)

This was a case where two of wanted a feature (that was present in emacs)
that we failed to find.

Thanks for the pointers to other sources.


>
> In short, please spell out what are the use cases you are thinking
> about, because it looks like we are talking about several different
> ones here, with possibly different solutions to each one of them.

Quite possibly.

The bottom line is that emacs has features that a large part of the user base
appears to be unaware of. I'm thinking it may be possible to generate some
form of documentation that might just put multiple pointers to a mode,
a variable
or some part of emacs that provides the feature that we only have an idea of
in our head. My term for this would would most likely be 'auto-reload' or some
such, i.e. when the file changes on disk, reload it.
For this instance the mapping is from 'reload' through to revert or
auto-revert-mode.


>
> > And I'd never heard of C-h P. As I said, I'd need to know the magic
> > word 'revert' to find revert. That's the index I think is missing.
>
> I thought you were asking for finding packages by keywords


I was, you've pointed out 3 or 4 other places to look.
The main point is that your keywords and mine/Steves or any other uses keywords
are going to vary depending on background?




> That is why I pointed out that an index of Emacs packages already
> exists, and it is what "C-h P" consults to do its job.
>
> Now I see that I need to add several more indices to the list:
>
>  . The index in the Info manual (search it by the `i' command)
>
>  . The virtual index produced by "apropos" and "apropos-documentation"
>
>  . The "Glossary" node in the Emacs manual


If thats believed to be the most appropriate place then fine.
I'd find it hard to see how you'll collect other peoples understanding of
the keywords. That's why I suggested a wiki approach or webpage.

I find the emacs info pages a pain to navigate compared to searchable,
indexable html pages derived from indexed xml. That's my bias I guess.

I was trying to be helpful Eli.

regards


-- 
Dave Pawson
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http://www.dpawson.co.uk