documentation for align-regexp and co.

[Roelli, Charles A]

I came across the function `align-regexp' which is defined in align.el. The documentation for the function (docstrings etc.) is visible from Emacs via the usual methods, and I can see in the code of align.el that the functions in the file have been around since Emacs 21.1. However I couldn’t find any documentation for any of these functions in either the Emacs or the Elisp manual, which is surprising. Is this a mistake, or are some files/functions purposefully left out of the official manuals?

Cheers,
Charles

[Kaushal Modi]

You are right, the emacs or elisp manual do not talk about this function.
All the functions in the emacs source are not documented in the manuals.
But most of them are at least documented in the function doc-strings.

Please open a bug report requesting the info you find missing regarding
this function. What part is unclear in the docstring? etc..

For now, you might find this useful to learn more about align-regexp:
http://emacs.stackexchange.com/q/2644/115

--

Kaushal Modi

[Roelli, Charles A]

Thanks Kaushal. The docstrings and the link you gave are more than enough to learn about the command; what I'm more worried about is having useful functions like these go forgotten if they're not written up in the manual. Do you think it would be worth filing a bug report to have it included? It seems like most of the documentation is already ready to go in from the file's source, and it would just have to be copied into the Texinfo docs.

Cheers,
Charles

On 20 Jul 2016, at 22:41, Kaushal Modi <kausha...@gmail.com<mailto:kausha...@gmail.com>> wrote:

You are right, the emacs or elisp manual do not talk about this function. All the functions in the emacs source are not documented in the manuals. But most of them are at least documented in the function doc-strings.

Please open a bug report requesting the info you find missing regarding this function. What part is unclear in the docstring? etc..

For now, you might find this useful to learn more about align-regexp: http://emacs.stackexchange.com/q/2644/115

[Kaushal Modi]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 7:05 AM Roelli, Charles A <
charles....@imperial.ac.uk> wrote:

> Thanks Kaushal. The docstrings and the link you gave are more than enough
> to learn about the command;
>

You're welcome.

> what I'm more worried about is having useful functions like these go
> forgotten if they're not written up in the manual.
>

The manual does not have all the functions out there.

> Do you think it would be worth filing a bug report to have it included?
>

But a bug report to request adding documentation for this function with
examples to the manual will be useful.

Thanks.

> --

Kaushal Modi