It's been a while since this exists. I just want to mention what a good idea it was and how useful that little link is. Thanks

Shortdocs are great! I wish there were more of them!

Be the change you want to see! I don't know if you've ever contributed to emacs before, but if not the process isn't difficult. You could make the shortdocs you want to use.

what did it have? i am realy curious

> the process isn't difficult The copyright assignment stuff is a hindrance though. What if I don't feel like doxing myself? Unfortunately that means no direct contribution and no Elpa either.

Functions documented in groups. Or generally [the whole shortdoc feature](https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/whats-new-in-emacs-28-1).

I really like [helpful](https://github.com/Wilfred/helpful) with [elisp-demos](https://github.com/xuchunyang/elisp-demos). Shows you even more infos with links to the manual etc and a demo code snippet. E.g. your `match-string` help buffer looks for me like this: https://i.imgur.com/shRD3sx.png

Yeah this is true. I more meant that adding the code for shortdocs for something as yet undocumented wouldn't require great elisp skills -- one could mostly just imitate what was already there. But yes, the process of actually contributing that code be improved.

My favorite bits are the “Probably introduced” bits. When something showed up should be a knowable thing but I like bit of mystery.

If you don't want to "dox" yourself, then you can't write *any* publicly released Free Software since you kind of need to put your legal name as the copyright holder on anything you release. So doesn't seem any more cumbersome than releasing any work publicly, unless you release code with no copyright or licensing information that no one else can use.

Strictly-speaking, releasing things only under a pseudonym (with no mapping available anywhere) simply makes enforcement of its license exceedingly difficult. But most corporations in countries that actually enforce copyright-based licenses will still be wary of ignoring the license (whereas those in countries that don't enforce it won't really act any differently whether it's legal-name licensed Free Software or Proprietary). Users meanwhile will still use the software and other devs may or may not contribute according to the intent implied & stated. I still consider the good that comes from releasing Free Software in such a fashion to be worth the downsides.

If you trust the FSF, their official policy does say [they will use a pseudonym in any public documents if asked to](https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Papers.html) (although the legal papers have to use a legal name): > If a contributor wants the FSF to publish only a pseudonym, that is ok. The contributor should say this, and state the desired pseudonym, when answering the request- form. The actual legal papers will use the real name, but the FSF will publish only the pseudonym. Although it sounded like you wouldn't even want the FSF to know your name, but figured I'd mention it just in case you were OK with that and just unaware.

> Although it sounded like you wouldn't even want the FSF to know your name, but figured I'd mention it just in case you were OK with that and just unaware. Yeah, I am actually aware. Unfortunately during legal proceedings it could be disclosed *and* even the FSF isn't safe from cyberattacks (they've certainly annoyed enough malicious actors for motivation to exist too).

I didn't know about the latter! That looks wonderful.

Wow, that is a game changer for an Elisp newbie like myself. Thanks for sharing!

That wording is used for items that existed before the feature to track things was added. At that time, the code archeology effort needed to give definite attributions to every variable, function, symbol, etc. was gigantic, the tools were relatively primitive (predating CVS), and the benefit was seen as extremely minor — are you *really* worried about supporting **specific** emacs versions that predate multiple fonts/colors/(X)windows? If that sort of things interest you, the source repos are available, including the tarballs that predate Linux and gzip. I probably even know someone in Boston who can loan you a vax-2000 or IBM RT if you want to build it…

I guessed it was something like this and the programable nature of the program. I can imagine how tough it would be to pin down certain things before tools like git. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there were many different versions being maintained by different universities before being unified once a floppy disk wasn’t the only way to distribute software.

Helpful made help slower to a point where I realized I started avoiding calling help when I last used it. I'll have to try it again and see if its acceptably fast.