Re: help-fns.el patch for commands to describe options and commands

[Richard Stallman]

    Attached is a patch for help-fns.el. It modifies `describe-function' and
    `describe-variable', so that a prefix arg means that candidates are commands
    and user options, respectively. So `C-u C-h f' shows and accepts only
    commands as completion candidates, and `C-u C-h v' shows and accepts only
    user options for completion.

That doesn't sound very useful to me.  What is the benefit it seeks to provide?
Only to limit completion?

I won't object to installing it, but I do not want to document it in
the Emacs Manual, because it isn't worth the paper.

    In addition, for convenience, two new commands are defined to do the same
    thing without `C-u': `describe-command' and `describe-option'. This is
    especially useful for newbies, who might search for something that describes
    a command or an option.

I don't think this is is going to be useful for newbies.  They won't
learn these commands.  If they remember anything relevant it will be
C-h f and C-h v.  C-h f works with commands just as with
noninteractive functions; C-h v works with user options just as with
other variables.

If you are saying that you think some newbies will type M-x
describe-command to look for a command, I think that will be quite
rare.  If we want to make that work, the simplest way is to alias
describe-command to describe-function.