Re: keymap display inconsistency in help

[Stephen Berman]

[I provided test cases showing that with make-keymap, the *Help*
buffer displays the key bindings is ASCII order, while with
make-sparse-keymap, the *Help* display is in reverse ASCII order:]

>     Typing `M-h f srb-test2-mode' brings up this *Help* buffer:
>     ___________________________________________________________
>     srb-test2-mode is an interactive Lisp function.
>     (srb-test-mode)
> 
>     Major mode to test display of key bindings.
> 
>     key             binding
>     ---             -------
> 
>     d         srb-test-4
>     a         srb-test-1
>     C         srb-test-3
>     B         srb-test-2

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> What I get with the latest development version is
> 
>     d         srb-test-4
>     C         srb-test-3
>     B         srb-test-2
>     a         srb-test-1
> 
> which is the reverse of the order they were added.
> 
> Maybe the CVS version differs from 21.2 in this behavior.

I just ran my make-sparse-keymap test case again, and to my
embarrassment and perplexity, I now get this too, and not reverse
ASCII order.  Sorry for the false report.  I don't know what I did
before to get reverse ASCII order, but it was definitely there,
because I pasted it from the *Help* buffer.  I still reproducibly get
ASCII order (not input order) for the make-keymap test case.  So the
display inconsistency remains.  I'm curious why make-keymap and
make-sparse-keymap differ in this respect (as well as others, as I've
recently learned).  Are there efficiency or other reasons?  (I tried
looking at keymap.c but I'm not fluent enough in the Emacs source code
to see what's going on on my own.)

--Steve Berman