Subject: Re: bug#4718: 23.1; C-h f gives doc for the wrong function

From: Juanma Barranquero <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:32:19 +0200

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 03:49, Drew Adams <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I entered one entire function name. Emacs didn't complain that there was no such
> function.

In your example, you didn't even load dired, so I was trying to
understand what you did.

> Emacs instead silently gave me the doc for a different function.
> That's totally inappropriate.
>
> When I hit RET, Emacs should say `No match' and not accept my erroneous input,
> as it used to do in Emacs 22 and before.

Stefan already has answered that: emacs 22 did in some cases, too.

> Imagine if you paste a complete URL in your browser and you get a totally
> different Web site from what you request, the browser thinking that it is being
> helpful because it notices some similarity between your URL and another that it
> knew about.

Irrelevant. URL completion in most browsers is not similar to Emacs completion.

> Can you imagine your Web experience in that case? Imagine if your browser does
> that each time you click a broken link: "helpfully" transforming the bad URL
> into a different one that "works" - but that corresponds to an unrelated Web
> site.

Navigating to an unexpected URL could have security implications; not
so for symbol completion (at least, in most cases).

> Emacs has always allowed you, in some contexts (but not in others), to hit RET
> to both complete and enter the completed text. But that becomes less appropriate
> when the completion is not obvious from the input text (as is the case for
> partial completion).
>
> It's particularly problematic if the user's intention is that what s?he entered
> be considered already complete. And we cannot know that intention for sure; we
> can only suppose it because s?he chose to use RET, not TAB.

You're saying that you would rather it didn't work for `dolis' <RET>
either, then. You prefer to be asked. Fine. Personally, I kinda like
the way it works now. Certainly does not strike me as user-unfriendly.

    Juanma