GNU bug report logs - #35261
26.1; EBDB Documentation

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From: David Masterson <dsmasterson <at> outlook.com>
To: Eric Abrahamsen <eric <at> ericabrahamsen.net>
Cc: "35261 <at> debbugs.gnu.org" <35261 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: bug#35261: 26.1; EBDB Documentation
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:14:20 +0000

Eric Abrahamsen <eric <at> ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> On 04/15/19 20:56 PM, David Masterson wrote:

>> On that, it seems that the documentation is still evolving in that
>> area. For instance, looking at the documentation of ebdb-field-*
>> variables says that they are obsolete as of 25.1 and the documentation
>> is relatively low, so the error above would be confusing in that you'd
>> wonder if you were looking at the right variable.

> Unfortunately this doesn't have to do with EBDB, but rather with a weird
> interaction between the help system and EIEIO. Class names apparently
> once functioned as variables, but no longer do, and so Emacs complains
> when you try to treat one as a variable. You'll have better luck using
> help to look up the *function* definitions of the class names, not the
> variable definition.

Ouch!  That's not logical and will need some explanation somewhere.  The
logical assumption would be that the function that is asking for input
is using some variable (structure) as a reference for what it expects as
input, so, when the error reports a name in the error, the first thought
would be that that is the structure to look at to get the clue as to
what it's looking for.  It's a little confusing (to say the least) for
the lay person to see functions and variables with the same name.

Something to lay out a little more as a primer in the Info docs?

--
David

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