Re: Emacs inventing system documentation

[LEE Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Reuben" == Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> writes:

    Reuben> I'm using Emacs 21.3.1, and have noticed that from time to
    Reuben> time, when I use M-x man foo RET to get a man page, the
    Reuben> man page is displayed along with a message "foo man page
    Reuben> made up". I don't want Emacs inventing man pages! I'd
    Reuben> rather it just displayed the man page I have installed, or
    Reuben> gave an error if it didn't exist.

Emacs  doesn't invent the  man page.   M-x man  simply runs  the 'man'
command on your system, grabs its output, and then add the formatting.
If you  don't have a  man page for  command 'foo', Emacs will  give an
error.


    Reuben> I must admit that up to now I haven't noticed any
    Reuben> differences between the pages made up by Emacs and those I
    Reuben> get from using the "man" command, 

Because Emacs runs 'man' to get the page contents.


    Reuben> but I haven't checked the details. 

You should have done so before going out and shouting.


    Reuben> What if Emacs guesses wrongly about some arcane corner of
    Reuben> bash variable expansion? I could end up wasting hours
    Reuben> trying to track down a bug in a script (and even perhaps
    Reuben> waste developers' time by mistakenly reporting a bug in
    Reuben> bash) when the real problem is Emacs's unwilligness or
    Reuben> inability to just look at the real man pages.

The real  problem is your unwillingness  or inability to  just look at
Emac's "man"  buffers and  compare them with  the so called  "real man
pages".


    Reuben> Is this just a configuration problem? 

A configuration in you mind, then.


    Reuben> I think I have my MANPATH and so-on correctly set
    Reuben> up. Looking through apropos I notice:

    Reuben> Man-default-man-entry Function: Make a guess at a default
    Reuben> manual entry.

Read further:

        Make a guess at a default manual entry.
        This guess is based on the text surrounding the cursor.


Now, you  tell me what this  last sentence means,  according to *YOUR*
understand.


    Reuben> I'm guessing this function is being run when it shouldn't
    Reuben> be.

You're making an even worse guess than Emacs.


-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee