GNU bug report logs - #79469
31.0.50; Ungrammatical sentence from describe-function

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From: Stephen Berman <stephen.berman <at> gmx.net>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 79469 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#79469: 31.0.50; Ungrammatical sentence from describe-function
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 23:27:21 +0200

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On Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:55:24 +0300 Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:

>> Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 18:41:16 +0200
>> From:  Stephen Berman via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
>> 
>> Calling `describe-function' on a noninteractive non-byte-compiled
>> function produces an ungrammatical sentence in the *Help* buffer:
>> 
>> 0. emacs -Q
>> 1. Load a non-byte-compiled file that contains a noninteractive function
>>    definition, e.g. edt-user.el from the Emacs "etc" directory.
>> 2. Call `describe-function' on a noninteractive function from that file,
>>    e.g. `C-h f edt-setup-user-bindings RET'.
>> ==> The *Help* buffer now begins with this sentence:
>> 
>> edt-setup-user-bindings is a interpreted-function in
>> ‘~/src/emacs/emacs-master/etc/edt-user.el’.
>> 
>> It should say "...is an interpreted-function...".
>> 
>> Here are three possible fixes:
>
> Thanks.
>
> I think this splits hair, but if we want to do that, let's do it
> right: instead of hard-coding specific words, implement a function
> that produces "a" or "an" depending on the following word.  Because
> tomorrow someone will add yet another function qualifier, and what
> will we do then? add one more hard-coded phrase?

How's this?

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Steve Berman

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