Subject: Re: bug#27229: eldoc wrong highlighting for "when"

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 13:09:38 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> But when and unless aren't functions, they are "special forms".  So
> using &rest there is less self-explanatory for those who aren't
> necessarily privy to the internals.

'defmacro.*&rest.body' gives me 487 results, and only `when' and `until'
had that odd (fn).

If we want *Help* to display &rest body in a different way, then we
should fix that in help-mode, not mess up the calling convention string.

> IOW, the removed (fn ..." stuff was there for a reason.  The original
> bug report here wasn't about how we display the doc string, it was
> about what eldoc does.  So IMO the fix should have been in eldoc,
> which would also avoid this negative effect.

As the bug report explains, there is no fix possible, since the "..."
syntax is ambiguous: We use it both for "and then there's more" and
"there are alternating pairs of arguments".

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no