auto-fill-mode not quite what it claims to be

[Joe Corneli]

The documentation for auto-fill-mode says

  "In Auto Fill mode, inserting a space at a column beyond
  `current-fill-column' automatically breaks the line at a previous
  space."

Well, this does not seem to be the case, because you can run `(insert " ")'
beyond the `current-fill-column' and all that happens is that the space is
inserted.  OTOH, if you press the space bar, a space is inserted and the
paragraph is filled.



In GNU Emacs 21.3.50.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin7.4.0, X toolkit)
 of 2004-06-22 on hope-of-a-stone.local
configured using `configure '--prefix=/sw' '--without-carbon' '--with-x' 
'--without-gif' '--infodir=${prefix}/share/info' '--mandir=${prefix}/share/man' 
'--libexecdir=${prefix}/lib' '--with-x-toolkit=lucid' 
'--without-toolkit-scroll-bars' 'CPPFLAGS=-I/sw/include' 'LDFLAGS=-L/sw/lib''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: nil
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Help

Minor modes in effect:
  auto-image-file-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  display-time-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  view-mode: t

Recent input:
. <tab> SPC SPC <backspace> $ E M . / a / . <backspace>
e l i s p / <return> C-h f a u t o - f i l <tab> m
<tab> <return> <down> <down> C-x o <down> <down> <down>
<down> <down> C-SPC C-e <down> M-w C-x b <return> M-x
<up> <up> <up> <up> <return> SPC C-/ M-: <insert> i
n s e r t SPC " " <left> SPC C-e <return> C-h f <up>
<return> C-x o <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> M-x
r e p l <tab> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace>
<backspace> o r <tab> <return>

Recent messages:
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