Subject: bug#38996: 26.3; Missing documentation for `list-at-point' function in elisp manual.

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2020 18:18:02 +0200

> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2020 20:33:15 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Mark Harig via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <[email-masked]>
> 
> The NEWS file for Emacs 26.2/.3 documents changes to `thing-at-point', including mention of the function
> `list-at-point'.  C-h f (describe-function) provides documentation of `list-at-point', but C-h S
> (info-lookup-symbol) for `list-at-point' responds with "Not documented as a symbol: list-at-point'.  A check of
> the node in the elisp manual that documents `thing-at-point' does not show any mention of `list-at-point', nor
> does the previous node ("Near Point").  If `list-at-point' is documented elsewhere in the elisp manual, then an
> index manual entry is needed for this function.  Without this documentation, it is still possible to use
> `list-at-point', but when it is not documented in the manual, users might not know that it exists.

Thank you for your report.

We don't document every function in the manual: that would make the
manual too large (it already prints as 2 very thick volumes).  This
function is new, and has no callers inside Emacs, so whether it is
important enough to warrant a place in the manual remains to be seen.

For discoverability, we rely on built-in Help features such as
'apropos', and yes, on people reading NEWS when they start using a new
version, because reading that will tell them about changes in a much
more efficient way than the same information buried among many
hundreds of pages of the manual.

So I think we should wait and see if this function needs to be added
to the manual.