announcing defaults when reading from minibuffer

[Emilio Lopes]

I've just asked myself if there's any convention for announcing
defaults when reading from minibuffer.  Skimming the Elisp manual
didn't reveal anything in this regard.  Seaching the archives of this
list I found this message from RMS:

   The standard for Emacs is (default foo).  There may be some
   nonstandard functions that use [foo], due to imperfect quality
   control, but we should stick to the standard (unless we decide to
   change it).

[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-06/msg00085.html]

So I documented this convention in "(elisp) Text from Minibuffer".

Here's the patch:


2005-08-28  Emilio C. Lopes  <address@hidden>

        * minibuf.texi (Text from Minibuffer): mention convention for
        announcing default values when reading from the minibuffer.

diff -rN -c old-emacs-darcs.eclig/lispref/minibuf.texi 
new-emacs-darcs.eclig/lispref/minibuf.texi
*** old-emacs-darcs.eclig/lispref/minibuf.texi  Sun Aug 28 14:20:31 2005
--- new-emacs-darcs.eclig/lispref/minibuf.texi  Sun Aug 28 14:05:41 2005
***************
*** 154,159 ****
--- 154,167 ----
  empty string, @code{""}.  In this respect, it is different from all
  the other minibuffer input functions in this chapter.
  
+ Note that the standard way in Emacs to announce a default value when
+ reading from the minibuffer is to put it between parenthesis following
+ the word ``default'' as in
+ 
+ @smallexample
+ Enter value (default 42): 
+ @end smallexample
+ 
  If @var{keymap} is address@hidden, that keymap is the local keymap to
  use in the minibuffer.  If @var{keymap} is omitted or @code{nil}, the
  value of @code{minibuffer-local-map} is used as the keymap.  Specifying