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Re: Disable menu bar mode


From: Rusi
Subject: Re: Disable menu bar mode
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2017 05:52:54 -0800 (PST)
User-agent: G2/1.0

On Tuesday, December 19, 2017 at 8:12:59 AM UTC+5:30, Drew Adams wrote:
> > IOW the complaint is with the confusing and incomplete
> > documentation: «nil = true (turn on)?? So what is false then?»
> 
> This question comes up every so often.  It's a natural
> one, in part because the doc strings for particular
> minor modes sometimes suck, er, are less than perfect.

My — quite unschooled — analysis of the situation is this:
There is a pun in Lisp: nil  can mean boolean False or the empty list
And in cases like this the pun gets particularly infelicitous.

> 
> Doc strings of regular minor-mode commands (e.g., modes
> defined with `define-minor-mode') should describe the
> behavior, which is essentially the same for all such
> modes.  And the doc strings should say clearly that the
> command is, in fact, a minor-mode command.
> 
> Whether this gets done manually or partly automatically
> (e.g. by `define-minor-mode'), it needs to be done.
> 
> The doc of macro `define-minor-mode', itself, is quite
> good.  Unfortunately, an "end user" of a minor-mode
> command is not necessarily going to consult the doc
> for the macro that created the command ;-).
> 
> The doc string for the command itself needs to have
> the info about it. This should be a no-brainer, I
> think.  But the fact is that there is a fair amount
> to say, and for whatever reasons, sometimes it is
> omitted.
> 
> There have been a bunch of bugs filed about this
> general problem.  Sometimes things do get improved.
> Here are a couple such bug reports:
> 
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=25428
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=29497
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=20462

Thanks for that list.
If its helpful I can file a (doc)bug report… if someone who is likely to attend
to it indicates that its worth attending to.

[Yeah Yeah I know that the work that the emacs-devs do is many orders of 
magnitude more than the work of filing a bug-report!
Its also true that my attempts are usually less than successful so I like
to check that others also see it as a bug]


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