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Subject: Re: d e s c r i b e - f u nc t i o n
References: <199707290245.LAA06139@orion.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>
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From: SL Baur <steve@xemacs.org>
In-Reply-To: Jens-Ulrik Holger Petersen's message of "Tue, 29 Jul 1997 11:45:43 +0900"
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Date: 28 Jul 1997 20:26:38 -0700
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Jens-Ulrik Holger Petersen <petersen@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp> writes:

> [This is a resend of a message sent to xemacs-beta and
> bug-gnu-emacs: I guess smartlist(?) unsubscribed me from
> xemacs-beta because of the substring "scribe" in the original
> subject!]

Sorry about that.  Your analysis is close.  It appears `describe' is
an acceptable misspelling of `unsubscribe'.

> I would like to suggest that `describe-function' ("help.el") be
> modified so that it doesn't not put a ":" after the function name
> in its output.  This is inconsistent because symbols can end in a
> colon and adding a colon at the end of the symbol makes it harder
> to access the function's symbol in the help buffer with
> emacs-lisp-syntax.

> I suggest in Emacs-20 changing ":" to " is" and in XEmacs-20
> perhaps just removing the ":".

> I would be happy to provide patches for the above minor change.

Would you consider making an additional change?


Emacs/Mule:
describe-function: an interactive compiled Lisp function.
(describe-function FUNCTION)

Display the full documentation of FUNCTION (a symbol).

XEmacs 20:
describe-function: (function)
  -- an interactive compiled Lisp function.
  -- loaded from help.elc.
Display the full documentation of FUNCTION (a symbol).

I wouldn't mind swapping the first two lines so the output is
consistent:

describe-function is an interactive compiled Lisp function.
  (describe-function function)
  -- loaded from help.elc.
Display the full documentation of FUNCTION (a symbol).

