Re: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 03 May 2020 17:04:21 -0400
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden,
>  Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden>
> 
> > And I don't see what's wrong with that.  I saw what I thought was the
> > wrong tool for the job, so I suggested to use a better tool.
> 
> I get the impression that you misunderstand what is "the job".
> 
> >From where I stand, documentation can help reduce the pain of
> inconsistent naming, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem, so the
> tools you suggest are "the wrong tools" ;-)

The "job" is discoverability.  A reminder how this started:

  Philippe Vaucher in 
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-04/msg01917.html:

>     > Overall I think it's a shame that the Emacs api wasn't designed with 
> discoverability/consistency in mind
> 
>     Would you mind elaborate on this deficiency?  I don't think I quite
>     understand the complaint.
> 
> 
> It's hard to really criticize because Emacs was designed ages ago.
> 
> My point is simply this one: when I look at 
> https://github.com/magnars/dash.el, https://github.com/NicolasPetton/seq.el 
> or https://github.com/magnars/s.el I can immediately understand how the 
> library works and how to achieve things. I can also easily use `C-h f` to 
> find about the function I want.
> 
> In Emacs, parts of it are designed following the same principle, but a lot of 
> it isn't:
> 
>     
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Association-Lists.html
>  sometimes assoc, alist-get, assq, copy-alist. How am I supposed to use `C-h 
> f alist TAB` to discover the function I want? I can't, I have to go to that 
> webpage and read it all.
>     
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/List-Elements.html 
> sometimes named logically (nth, remove, append), sometimes named after 
> implementation detail (car, cdr), and no grouping at all so I can't `C-h f 
> list TAB`

I submit that C-h documentation commands _are_ the tools for the job
of discoverability, and were actually mentioned at the very beginning
of this discussion.  The "consistent naming" was put forward as a
means to ease discoverability, so it is (allegedly) an alternative
tool for the same job.

Maybe I'm in the wrong discussion, but I was always talking about
discoverability and the best tools for that, as Philippe started.