Re: My usage of imenu is broken.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 28 May 2024 10:53:18 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> Hello, Emacs.
> 
> imenu no longer works for me.  The imenu page in the Emacs manual says
> 
>     the command [imenu] always displays the whole list of valid names.  
> 
> This is not true.  When I type C-c i (my binding for imenu) I see no
> such list.

AFAIK, this never worked literally as the manual says.  I went as far
back as Emacs 23, and I don't see it.

> When I additionally type TAB I still see no such list.

I do see the list after TAB.  So I guess the devil is in the details
(which file you were visiting, under what major mode, etc.) -- details
you haven't provided...

> All I see is *Rescan*, Function, and Variable.  I think the manual
> should be fixed.

Let's first understand why it doesn't work for you as it does for me.

> The manual talks about "flatten"ing without explaining what this means.
> The NEWS item doesn't explain it either.  I think this should be fixed.

Sadly, it is quite pointless to complain about deficiencies of
documentation in most cases, because no one which is in the position
to fix that is listening or can be bothered!

My advice is to invest the time, study the code (which will most
probably allow you to find ways of getting the behavior you want or
find and fix the bugs which prevent that), and fix the documentation
as required.  This way, everyone wins, starting from you!

And I did just that in this case: loaded 'imenu' and tried your
recipes.  Lo and behold, it does work for me, at least when I visit
src/dispnew.c from our tree (the first file I thought about, nothing
special about it).

> On typing C-c i, I used to be able to type the first characters of a
> function name and complete it with TAB in the minibuffer.  This no
> longer works.

It does for me.

> It doesn't work even if I set imenu-flatten to t.  Instead I've got
> to type boilerplate first.  This is unacceptable to me.
> 
> How do I get the old behaviour back, please?  Why doesn't the NEWS item
> say how to get back the old behaviour?

Old behavior in what Emacs version, please?  (In fact, you don't even
say in which version the above misbehavior happened to you, which I
find unexpected from you.)

> What happened to Emacs's convention that new facilities are disabled by
> default to begin with, and only made the default after positive
> experience with their use?

Nothing happened (except bugs, here and there).