Re: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Richard Stallman]

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  > If the goal is to list all the functions related to manipulating the topic
  > of regexp (something like
  > https://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#regular-expression-objects or
  > https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.7.1/Regexp.html), then the search you propose
  > is a poor tool.

I think you are making a distinction between names that are 
core parts of the use of regexps, and names that contain 'regexp'
because they stand for something that uses a regexp somehow.

Is that right?

And you expect the former to have names that start with 'regexp'
(although we have never had such a naming practice for data types).

Is that right?

Is the reason you expect the names to follow that pattern
that you are coming from a language that uses abstract object tyoes
where each type defines methods to operate on it?  Do you wish you
could ask, "Show me the operations defined on type 'regexp'"?

Lisp does not work that way, but I think we can set something up that
would give you more or less the same results for documentation.

  > I'm not objected to have aliases that would make it easier to find out
  > the function's name using simple completion, but I think you greatly
  > overestimate the usefulness of that in many practical situations.

I wouldn't want to rename lots if Lisp functions or fill up the namespace
with aliases, just so that names of functions which are "about alists"
all start with 'alist'.

But if it is just to make C-h f completion on 'alist' include 'assoc',
we don't need real aliases.  We could do it with aliaases that work
only in completion of function names.  We could make an alias
("alist" "assoc"), which would add "assoc" to the list
of completions of "alist".

These aliases would avoid the downsides completely.  Would they help you?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)