Re: Request for comments: help texts

[Olaf Till]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 09:54:30AM +0100, David Grundberg wrote:
> Olaf Till wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 03:57:57PM +0100, David Grundberg wrote:
>>   
>>> Function declarations inside script files: Theoretically we could
>>> make 'help f' return "help for f", but I don't think it is worth
>>> supporting.  Therefore:
>>>
>>> help filename: undocumented
>>> help f: undocumented
>>>     
>>
>> Maybe your changes won't touch this at all, but after the script is
>> run so that these functions are defined as "command-line function",
>> their individual help-texts should be available provided they were
>> written as the first block _within_ the function body. This seems to
>> be the way functions defined on the command line are now treated.
>>
>> Olaf
>>   
>
> I see. I didn't know of this feature. It's present on the tip too.
>
> While I accept it, I don't understand why this feature is present, other  
> than as a side-effect. I don't see any use for having help texts in  
> these function declarations. Package writers should create proper  
> function files.

Maybe package writers should --- but others might want to use a script
as a collection of functions (so they can, e.g., change the
definitions of a standard set of functions by "source"ing different
scripts; though this probably should be rather done with functions
returning handles to subfunctions).

> David
>
> PS: Olaf, your email address drops when I use 'reply all', why is that?

I don't know :-( . Maybe I'm missing something in the proper way to
communicate with a list.

Olaf