It's about "set of things where I usually want to pick only one and jump
to it" versus "set of things which I usually want to see the full list
of, which stays around".
You can say that "definition" is perhaps not an ideal term for the
former. But the distinction is useful, and if you have better naming
suggestions, go ahead.
Until now the only built-in commands which went through that dispatcher
were the variations of xref-find-definitions, so the name wasn't a problem.
This whole thing started because you used that misnaming of
existing things as a justification for misnaming new things.
No, not pointless at all. My main use case for this is to
first invoke the command on a given place of interest and _then_
ask myself what I want to see of that symbol. "All references",
"definitions", "declarations"?
The combined view, as implemented in the current
xref-find-all-definitions by default, will then just show references.
Not necessarily, it depends on the backend's. But yes, it might.
Like I said, they are not "extra" because they will on most cases
include the kinds already shown by xref-find-definitions. I'm open to
other names, but please keep the intended semantics in mind (see above).
How bout "cross-reference", or simply xref? There's a reason why your xref.el
which you maintain inherited that name from SLIME by whoever ported the UI
(Helmut it was, IIRC);-) There's a lot of wisdom in that name.