Subject: bug#22692: docstring for xref-find-definitions

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:01:46 +0200

On 02/18/2016 06:50 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Failing that, the only band-aid I can offer is something like
>
>    Find the definition of the identifier at or near point.
>
> If you think it's better, we can make that change now.

Do we really want to codify that behavior? I've switched to use 
find-tag--default because it seemed appropriate for the etags backend, 
but the "near point" aspect looks fairly awkward to me, and I imagine 
third-party backends might choose to omit it.

I'd prefer to use the more precise behavior in find-tag-default-bounds 
as well. And if there's general agreement here, I wouldn't mind taking 
care of that patch.

Also note how careful the find-tag-default is in avoiding prescribing 
the exact behavior.

> Did you use M-. in Emacs 24 and before?  Because that's exactly what
> it did in this case, it would say this in the echo area:
>
>    Find tag (default 1):
>
> The reason is that this is what etags.el does when asked to find "the
> identifier at or near point".  Patches to make it smarter are welcome.
> (The relevant function is find-tag-default-bounds.)

Not necessarily. Every major mode that knows better should define its 
own find-tag-default-function (but none do, so far). See the dispatch 
inside find-tag--default.