Subject: RE: bug#29598: 26.0; doc of `load-history'

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 05:53:49 -0700 (PDT)

> >> > Shouldn't the doc say something about the order of the elements of the
> >> > alist?  It's a history, but neither the Elisp manual nor the doc string
> >> > mentions whether the beginning or the end of the list is the oldest
> >> > part of the history of loads.
> >>
> >> Since it's an alist, and every element should be there only once, why
> >> does the order matter?
> >
> > Because it's a history?  We already tell users, by using
> > that name, that it is chronological.  What we don't tell
> > them is which chronological order is used.
> >
> > If someone is looking for something, it helps to know whether
> > the list order is old-to-new or new-to-old.  And if someone
> > locates something of interest in the list it helps to know
> > whether it is the stuff that comes before or after it that
> > was loaded when it got loaded.
> >
> > Is there some reason not to mention the order?  We do, after
> > all, bother to call it `*-history'.
> 
> Do you have a use-case in mind here?  If we mention the order, we would
> need to follow that in the future, whereas if we don't we could
> potentially change it.  So unless there is a concrete need to document
> it, isn't it better to just avoid it?

I really don't understand this hesitation.
The use case is described above.  Users have a
chronological list.  Why would we _not_ want to
tell them which direction the list goes?  That's
not obvious.

If at some future point Emacs changes the behavior
(it never has), then we would, hopefully, document
the new order.

This is a very minor doc request, asking for a
word or two.