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From: crl@purdue-newton
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: problems with GNU EMACS
Message-ID: <4189@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-May-85 20:29:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4189
Posted: Mon May  6 20:29:29 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 8-May-85 03:22:39 EDT
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Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
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From: crl@purdue-newton
(I am not a designer or maintainer of GNU EMACS, although I have been
recently working heavily with it, and understand most of it.  Therefore,
my comments may not agree with those of the authors.)

There is currently not a very good way around the problem with the help
strings regarding key bindings.  The best way around this is to use
some sort  of escape mechanism in the documentation strings ala ITS
EMACS.  The way this works is as follows.  If you want to refer to a
function, say "save-buffer", you have a documentation string such as:
	"To save the changes, type \\[save-buffer\\]"
The help commands then key on the \\[ \\] strings and replace it with
whatever is currently bound like "^X^S" or if not bound "M-x
save-buffer".  The more I think about it, the easier it sounds.  Maybe
I'll take a crack at it sometime soon.

I have found that etags does not work on .el files.  I think that this
is due to not recognizing the .el extension.  I'll have to look at it
sometime.

It is indeed the (interactive) call that makes a function interactively
callable, i.e., by M-x or keystroke.  (commandp FUNCTION) is t if so,
and indeed Help could show this somehow.

As a side note, I am currently almost finished rewriting the MHI package
from Gosling Mocklisp that interacts with the MH ver 5 Mail System.
I'll turn it over to everyone "real soon now".

Charles LaBrec
crl @ purdue-newton.ARPA
(an EMACS hacker from way back who still fondly remembers TECO)