Re: Improved help from minibuffer prompts

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     > You didn't say which function you mean, but according to the code
>     > it looks like the entire doc string of the command that invoked
>     > the minibuffer is the help string you use.  I don't think
>     > that will be very natural.
> 
>     I think it is convenient. Every interactive function has already a
>     docstring.
> 
> The doc string for the function is not designed to explain how to
> enter a specific argument.  It is the wrong text for this job.

But it is better than no text -- so it would be nice to have a
way to specify a specific help text, but in case no such text has
been provided, just showing the function docstring would be a
reasonable fallback.

> 
>     When I type M-x grep and get a prompt and I am not sure, what I am
>     asked here, I can just get the help for the function grep.
> 
> That might be useful, but it isn't the same idea.  The idea was to
> tell the user about the argument being entered, wasn't it?

The doc string is supposed to describe the arguments, so it is more
useful than no help.