Re: Shift selection using interactive spec

[David Kastrup]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

>>> And the easiest way to do this is to change properties.
>>
>> I am not concerned about the easiest, but an appropriate way.
>
> Emacs should be easy to use and customize, not appropriate for some
> abstract goal.

Giving a function a well-defined default behavior is not customization.
It is function definition.

>>> Since there were complaints that property lists are "hidden" from
>>> users, I propose the following patch to display them in the output
>>> of `describe-function' and `describe-variable'.
>>
>> Properties are not part of either variable or function.  They are
>> part of the symbol.
>
> So what?  There are already about 200 distinct properties in Emacs
> attached indirectly to functions and variables via symbols, and they
> modify the default behavior, so the documentation should reveal them
> to users.

But there is no _meaning_ conveyed by some property.  It is
undocumented.

>> Lisp is Lisp, and Scheme is Scheme.
>
> And Emacs is Emacs (_extensible_, _customizable_, _self-documenting_
> real-time display editor).

So what about "self-documenting" applies to arbitrary properties?  We
don't document functions by disassembling them, but by documentation
strings.  The presence of a property is not self-explanatory, and it is
not apparent whether it may affect the variable, the function, or
something else.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum