Subject: bug#20403: Format of NEWS (navigating in it)

From: Phil Sainty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 22:56:50 +1300

"Ulrich Windl" <[email-masked]> writes:
> I know it's all a long tradition, but I'd prefer to have one major
> section per release.

I'd be in favour of that myself (it does seem slightly cleaner), but
I'm also not especially bothered by the current format.

> While re-discovering outline-mode, I also realized that C-c C-f
> [<outline-forward-same-level>] (and C-c C-b) have to be used twice
> to get to the next heading if an ASCII FF (form feed) (plus newline)
> character preceeds the heading.

Note that the form feeds are there so that you can use page-based
commands.  e.g.:

C-x ] (forward-page)
C-x [ (backward-page)
C-x n p (narrow-to-page)

If I'm checking the history of something, I generally grep the NEWS
files, jump to the appropriate hit, and then use C-x [ to check
which specific version of Emacs that entry was for.

The change I'd actually like to see is for NEWS to just be a symlink
to the appropriate NEWS.xx file, which should exist under that name
from the outset of development on version xx.  That way every NEWS.xx
would contain its full history in version-control, rather than just
being a renamed NEWS with maybe a handful of retro-added additions.

-Phil