Re: hyperlinks in variable's value - links to libraries

[Stefan Monnier]

> Resending. Shall I assume no one is interested?

>       ;; Hyperlinks in variable's value are quite frequently
>       ;; inappropriate e.g C-h v <RET> features <RET>
>       ;; (help-xref-on-pp from (point))
       
>     I disagree with the "fix" of commenting out this 
>     line - at the least, I would like such links to be an option.
    
>     Although it can be slow, it is very useful: looking at `features'
>     should be an entry point to accessing the features listed.    

I originally coded up the help-xref-on-pp feature.

I think it was a good feature, except that it didn't work quite right: it
sometimes added "spurious" xrefs and other times missed good xrefs.
Also it significantly slows down the construction of the *Help* text, so
much so that we had to put an arbitrary limit (hard coded at 5000 chars
right now) above which the highlighting is disabled.

So I added another feature, which is that clicking mouse-2 anywhere in the
buffer (not just on a visually announced xref with mouse-face highlight and
everything) will try to interpret the symbol under point as a var-name,
fun-name, or face-name.  This has the advantage of working no matter how
large the output is.  It also works in the docstrings where the author forgot
to mark symbols with `...'.
The main disadvantage of course is the lack of visual cue which makes this
feature barely known.


        Stefan