Re: Misleading --help text

[Kevin Rodgers]

Reuben Thomas wrote:
> I'm not sure whether this applies to current CVS (sorry, I only use 
> emacs from my GNU/Linux distribution), but emacs 21.4 --help says:
>
> Action options:
>
> FILE            visit FILE using find-file
> +LINE FILE        visit FILE using find-file, then go to line LINE
> +LINE:COLUMN FILE    visit FILE using find-file, then go to line LINE,
>                 column COLUMN
>
> Reading this, I would expect that
>
> emacs +5 +5 foo
>
> would visit a file called "+5", then go to line 5, and also visit a file 
> called "foo" but it doesn't, it visits "foo", then goes to line 5. 
> That's fine by me, but it does mean the documentation is misleading.
>
> I suggest the following stanza instead:
>
> Action options:
>
> FILE            visit FILE using find-file
> +LINE            go to line LINE in the next file visited
> +LINE:COLUMN         go to line LINE, column COLUMN in the next file
>                 visited
>
> Then it's fairly obvious that if you give two successive +LINE[:COLUMN] 
> options, the second will override the first.

Actually, I think it's misleading to mention visited files: the +LINE
and +LINE:COLUMN options act within the current buffer whether it is
visiting a file or not.

--
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA