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[PATCH] Unify fn and var help to make learning elisp a little easier


From: Kelly Dean
Subject: [PATCH] Unify fn and var help to make learning elisp a little easier
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:59:36 -0800 (PST)

A new user will often not remember whether a symbol he has in mind is a 
function or variable, so he doesn't know whether to use C-h f or C-h v to get 
help for it. For example do I use mark or (mark)? C-h v mark TAB TAB, it's not 
there, C-g C-h f mark TAB TAB, there it is. Later I'm looking for mark-active 
and try C-h f first, and again have to cancel and switch. Also, when a symbol 
is used as both a function and a variable, a new user would want to know about 
this, but he's not going to find out by using C-h f or C-h v unless he manually 
tries both every time he looks up something new, which is inconvenient.
A help command which provides completion on both functions and variables, and 
if a symbol is used as both, shows the help pages for both, solves both 
problems. The attached patch is a simple union of describe-function and 
describe-variable to do this. It triggers bug# 13105, but I sent a fix for that.

BTW am I supposed to send little things like this to emacs-devel, or to 
bug-gnu-emacs, or just post on the wiki? It isn't a bug, but some of the docs 
say the bug list is also for new features and patches so they can be tracked by 
bug number, but they also say if a patch needs discussion then it should go to 
the devel list. Maybe it's superfluous, not worth cluttering Emacs with it.

Attachment: descfunorvar.patch
Description: Text Data


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