Re: display-completion-list should not strip text properties

[Juri Linkov]

>> I think a better approach is to use a markup language in doc strings,
>> be it XHTML or even TexinfoML.  Then using a style sheet it can be
>> formatted nicely in the Help buffer.  Example of a doc string:
>
> My gut reaction is "Oh, no. Not Yet Another *ML". It's not very
> constructive, but gut reactions ain't fair or constructive -- sorry for
> that :-(
>
> (maybe those angle brackets just hurt my tummy too much ;)

Don't be afraid of using markup languages.  Such languages provide a good
common denominator that allows creating packages that will process doc
strings in different ways, e.g. writing a package producing a printed
reference manual from doc strings (especially useful for packages that
don't have a separate Info manual).

Using Lisp expressions inside the doc strings has other drawbacks: writing
expressions inside strings is poorly supported.  Just think that really
every quote should be escaped with \:

  "mumble \\,(propertize \"toto\" 'face 'highlight) titi"

Compare this with:

  "mumble <emph>toto</emph> titi"

You can argue that this can be written as:

  "mumble \\,(docstring-emph \"toto\") titi"

but it has too many toothpicks.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/