bug#31807: 27.0; `info-apropos' bad name or bad matching

[Drew Adams]

> > If you want to keep the current behavior then I'd suggest
> > having two different commands AND, for the one that does
> > literal string matching, change the name to something that
> > does not include "apropos" in the name.
> 
> I'm okay with a new command, but it should have a new name.  How about
> info-apropos-regexp?  The old command must keep its name, for the same
> reason we cannot change its behavior.

It's you who decide, of course.  But I disagree about the
name(s).

"Apropos", in Emacs, always has and always should mean (at
least) regexp-matching.  As a notion it is _opposed_ to
literal string matching, indicating that something more
general or more approximate is going on wrt matching.

A command name like `*-apropos-regexp' is a bad idea, IMO.
It just confuses.  And a command name `*-apropos' that
does only literal matching is an even worse idea, and it
is worse yet if accompanied by another command called
`*-apropos-regexp'.

Again, my suggestion is to "enhance" the behavior of
`info-apropos', to make it really do "apropos" matching.
For anyone who might prefer literal-matching, either it
could take a prefix arg to provide that or a separate,
literal(-only)-matching command could be added.

I seriously doubt that anyone will be upset if `info-apropos'
is enhanced to support more general matching.

Did you present the same, we-can't-enhance-because-legacy
argument when Kim (I think it was) added keyword-matching
to the `apropos*' commands?

Did you say that those commands have always accepted only
a regexp arg and just matched it directly?  Did you suggest
that alternative (new) commands be added that provide
keyword + regexp matching, and that tacked on the suffix
`-keyword' to their names (e.g. `apropos-command-regexp')?
I don't think you did - and rightfully so.  And no one
(including me) complained about that behavior enhancement.

> > > Btw, does this really work as intended without changes to
> > > Info-apropos-matches?  That function calls regexp-quote on its
> > > argument.
> >
> > Dunno.  When I get some time I'll take a closer look.
> 
> Thanks.

You're welcome.  But I haven't done it yet. ;-)