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RE: Why there is no key in the *Help* buffer to bring up the relevant in
From: |
Drew Adams |
Subject: |
RE: Why there is no key in the *Help* buffer to bring up the relevant info page? |
Date: |
Mon, 22 Jul 2019 13:41:21 -0700 (PDT) |
> > You might be interested on this: <helpful.el>
> Yes, thank you, I found it recently and it seems more featureful than
> the built in Help. Maybe the author should be asked to sign FSF papers
> if he hasn't yet done so and submit his code to replace the default
> Help.
What you request was discussed very recently on
emacs-devel@gnu.org.
I wrote this there:
----
Since 2011 library `help-fns+.el' has had that feature.
And it's user configurable - not just on/off, by
option `help-cross-reference-manuals':
1. Choose the list of manuals to search. Default:
Emacs and Elisp manuals.
2. Choose whether to (a) search systematically,
when `*Help*' is created, and add a `manuals'
link only if search finds hits, or (b) always
create a link, and search only when the link
is followed. Default: (b).
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2019-07/msg00242.html
This feature is implemented by searching the
manuals listed in a user option. By default,
the manuals are Emacs and Elisp. But you can
choose any Info manuals you like.
Now if Emacs itself implemented such a feature
then there might presumably be no need to search
for the right manual location(s) to visit either
(a) when you display the *Help* that contains the
link or (b) when you click the link.
Emacs itself could perhaps have an internal table
that gets populated at build time - at least for
manuals such as Emacs and Elisp.
And if more manuals were chosen by a user (by such
an option) then those additional manuals could be
handled similarly to what `help-fns+.el' does now:
user choice whether to search (a) when *Help* gets
displayed (slow, and useless if there's no match)
or (b) only when you click the link for Info.
Note that the `help-fns+.el' implementation adds
a single link in *Help*. When followed, if there
are hits in both Emacs and Elisp then it goes to
an Info buffer that has a links to each of those
manuals. (If only one manual covers it then the
link takes you directly to that location.)
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/download/help-fns%2b.el