Re: new apropos feature in Emacs-22

[Luc Teirlinck]

       Why not use my original proposal: final unquoted `[' (or final single
       `\') is ignored and means that the input is unconditionally a list of
       keywords, for this specialized (but real) need?

   I don't think this will be very useful, because the people it is most
   aimed at are beginners and they are unlikely to remember that this
   is available.

Complete beginners do not even know about the apropos commands.  Users
must have learned about them somewhere, probably in `(emacs)Apropos'.
If you them tell there that they normally can not use regexp special
characters in keywords, then I believe that it would be good to tell
them about a way out.  Maybe they may not remember the exact character
when they need it, but they will remember that the manual mentioned a
way out and they can check it back up.

It might also be useful to have an option `apropos-search-style',
whose default is the present method, but can also specify 'keywords or
'regexp.  I know that I can force regexp search by using stuff like
`[o]verwrite mode', but it is easy to forget and then I get confused
by all the nonsense I get.  I never intend to use anything else but
regexp search and I am convinced that this must be true for many other
users too.  In that case being forced to always make the input into
something Kim's procedure recognizes as a regexp is a nuisance.  It
makes apropos annoyingly different from other commands that use
regexps.

Sincerely,

Luc.