Emacs Doc Phrase: “Which See”
Emacs Doc String Uses the Idiotic Phrase: “Which See”
starting around Emacs 24.4 (Released 2014-10) , emacs inline doc for functions started to use the phrase “which see”. Very annoying.
![emacs doc which see changes 2023-11-14](i/emacs_doc_which_see_changes_2023-11-14.png)
There are a total of 163 lisp files containing the phrase.
![emacs doc which see 2023-11-14](i/emacs_doc_which_see_2023-11-14.png)
this is totally useless and incomprehensible.
If user wanted to read doc of another function, he can do that already sans being told. Also, usually there is a link right before it.
After some research of gnu emacs dev mailing list, apparently originally the phrase used was “q.v.”, back to at least 2005-11-11 by Drew Adams at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg00541.html
another post i found is
- From: Jambunathan K
- Subject: Re: C-h r and Images
- Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 23:01:36 +0530
- User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux)
- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-09/msg00017.html
i was sure that sometimes in 2015, emacs started to have lots “which see”.
According to git commit log, it seems there is no sudden drastic change. Odd.
![emacs git log which see chart 2023-11-14](i/emacs_git_log_which_see_chart_2023-11-14.png)
git log -S'which see'
(chart by Oliver Winspear)