🚀 go-pugleaf

In GNU Emacs 19.25.1 of Tue Jul 12 1994 on euax1i5c25 (sparc-sun-sunos4.1)

When issuing apropos or command-apropos on eg "word-search" you get
a display as follows:

word-search-backward
  Function: Search backward from point for STRING, ignoring differences in punctuation.
word-search-forward
  Function: Search forward from point for STRING, ignoring differences in punctuation.

That is, in a normal 80 char window, the first line of a documentation
string is restrained to 67 chars if wrap-around should be avoided,
whereas on the subsequent lines you may have 80 chars without
wrap-around. This "first line restraint" is not mentioned in the elisp
ref manual, and its not easily realized by intuition that it actually
works this way. (The refman DOES actually recommend you dont exceed 60
chars on any line, but how many elisp programmers knows this and
moreover follows it ? Again, its not a very intuitive limit when you
type along in a 80 char width window.)

Refering to the example above, its not unusual that even standard
elisp fun/var documentation exceed the 67 limit, giving an impaired
display appearance.

Its sometimes hard to summarize a fun/var in just one line, and its harder
when you dont even have a full 80 char line to do it. In this light I think
the display format of apropos should be more terse, so instead of
"function:/variable:" there's only "f:/v:", and the indentation could
be decreased 1 step, to give you a 75 chars first line. The "f:/v:" could be
explained in the apropos documentation.

In the command-apropos case, the header could be eliminated since the
doc-strings are always describing functions. That would yield 79 chars for
the "first line" doc-string.

-- 
Jonas Jarnestrom EUA/HO Ellemtel Telecom Labs etxjojm@eua.ericsson.se