Subject: RE: [External] : Re: bug#55853: 28.1; Please document f#(...) syntax in Elisp manual

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2022 19:06:46 +0000

> > Maybe instead of (or in addition to) a disassembly, a
> > user could be pointed - a least in some cases - to the
> > original source code (Lisp or C)?
> 
> Are there such cases?  The place is not always well defined.
> 
> In the cited original thread, when you see
> 
>   org-file-apps-windowsnt is a variable defined in `org.el'.
> 
> in the C-h v popup you just click on the "org.el" button and are
> directly guided to the source of the byte-code function.  We can't get
> much better I guess since we don't save the exact position of every
> lambda expression when compiling.
> 
> If the byte-code function is named, you can click on the name that will
> likely be around.  And if it has not, it's probably not trivial to find
> a related place of a definition (if there is one).
> 
> So, hard to answer without a real-life example where this would
> actually be a real improvement.

Certainly there are cases where there's no reasonable
way to locate where the thing was defined.  But when
there is a reasonable way it's good to point to the
definition/source code.

For cases where the name is displayed and you can
click it to go to some text with a link to the source,
there's no great problem (but perhaps getting there
could be more direct).

My point was that getting to the source code is what
a user wants more often than getting a disassembled
representation.