Emacs Manual Node Persistency Issues
This page is a short note about emacs manual's node's persistence across manual versions.
2 issues are noted here:
- ① Emacs Lisp function
Info-copy-current-node-name
changed its output slightly, between emacs 22 and emacs 23. - ② Emacs manual node entries are not persistent across manual versions, this creates a problem of “bad link” references in existing literature.
info-copy-current-node-name
In emacs 22, when in info inside emacs, if i press c (Info-copy-current-node-name
), i get the node name in my kill ring (aka clip board), for example:
(elisp)System Environment
But in emacs 23, i get:
(elisp) System Environment
This change is not documented in the emacs 23 release notes (aka NEWS file).
This change actually broke one of my personal elisp command. My command turns a line of the form:
(emacs)dired
into
<span class="ref">(info "(emacs)dired")</span>
Note: This is a trivial issue. My command can be trivially fixed. This change did not break backward compatibility with emacs 22. I've tested, that in emacs 22, the function info
works correctly regardless if there's this extra space in the argument.
Info Node Persistency
A more important issue i just discovered is that some info node in emacs 22 are gone in emacs 23.
In emacs 22, there's this node:
(info "(emacs)Transient Mark")
but it does not exist in emacs 23's manual.
Shouldn't the manual nodes be persistent across versions, for example, providing redirect when node changed?
As a practical matter, this means now i have to search my emacs publications to fix the nodes. A task that's not particularly trivial. This applies to any publication on emacs that reference to the manual by node.
This is a problem with Python's documentation too. thinking about this, actually i don't know if there are any manual that:
- ① Provide a computable reference to the chapter/sections.
- ② Maintain this on different versions of the manual.
However, since emacs does ① already, it's easy to do ② too.
Just noticed, there was a manual page
(info "(emacs) Mac Input")
, but it seems gone in emacs manual for GNU Emacs version 23.2.
The page discuss variables like mac-option-modifier, mac-command-modifier, mac-control-modifier.
Emacs Modernization
- Simple Changes Emacs Should Adopt
- Why Emacs Keys are Painful
- Ban Scratch Buffer
- M-x vs Alt+x Notation
- Menu Idiocy
- Mode Line Problem
- cua-mode Problem
- Inconsistency of Search
- grep in emacs Pain
- Problems of describe-mode
- Problems of Emacs Manual
- Emacs Manual Sucks by Examples
- kill-buffer Problem
- Emacs Spell Checker Pain
- Form Feed ^L
- Single Key Delete Whole Line
- Emacs HTML Mode Sucks
- Emacs No View Image on Windows
- HTML should replace Texinfo
- Support HTML Mail
- Problems of “man”
- Emacs Lisp Mode Syntax Coloring Problem
- Emacs AHK Mode Problems
- Ban Syntax Table
- Make elisp-index-search use Current Symbol
- Texinfo Invalid HTML
- Disappearing FSF URLs, 2006
- Emacs Manual Node Persistency Issues
- Emacs: dired-do-query-replace-regex Replace ALL (fixed)
- Problems of Emacs Supporting Obsolete Systems
- Elisp: Function to Copy/Delete a Dir Recursively (fixed)
- CommonLisp/SchemeLisp Emacs
- Text Editors Popularity
- Cursor Movement Behavior Survey
- Letter-Case Commands Problem
- Select Line/Block/Quote, Extend
- isearch Current Word
- Reformat Line Wrap