Symbol Documentation viewing

[Niels Lauritzen <SR.LAURITZEN at MIT-SPEECH>]

In Symbolics 3600 ZWEI in System 242.356, Hardcopy 20.10, ZOO 3.3,
Spire-Macros 3.9, Compute 2.5, Attribute 3.10, Audio 2.4,
Speech-Attributes 2.6, Display 3.11, Speech-Layouts 4.7, Versatec 3.0,
Prtout 2.0, Spire 14.0, SpireX 11.1, ZOO-SPIRE 1.0, FEP 18, on Lisp Machine Grizzly:

    Date: Tue 8 Jan 85 05:10:07-EST
    From: The Mailer Daemon <Mailer@MIT-OZ>
    To: SR.LAURITZEN@MIT-SPEECH
    Subject: Message of 8-Jan-85 05:10:03

    Message failed for the following:
    bug-zwei@MIT-SPEECH.#Chaos: -No such mailbox at this site.
		------------
    Received: from MIT-GRIZZLY by MIT-OZ via Chaosnet; 8 Jan 85 05:10-EST
    Date: Tuesday, 8 January 1985, 05:10-EST
    From: Niels Lauritzen <SR.LAURITZEN at MIT-SPEECH>
    Subject: ZWEI documentation commands not fully supportive
    To: bug-zwei at MIT-SPEECH

    I believe that if a symbol has a :DOCUMENTATION propery than
    it ought to be viewable in ZMACS even if it is larger
    than the echo area.  Unfortunately this is not the case with
    current ZMACS...

    Let FOO be a symbol with a multi-line :DOCUMENTATION property.

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    Attempt #1:  (c-sh-V) Describe Variable at Point implemented by COM-DESCRIBE-VARIABLE-AT-POINT

    This loses because it ALWAYS prints it in the echo area.

    Also it might say "FOO has no value."  which is fine.

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    Attempt #2: (c-sh-D) Quick Documentation implemented by COM-QUICK-DOCUMENTATION

    This only shows the first line of the documentation string, which is its
    advertised behavior, but it isn't what I want.

    Also it doesn't choke if FOO has no definition because it doesn't look for an arglist.

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    Attempt #3: (m-sh-D) Long Documentation implemented by COM-LONG-DOCUMENTATION

    This loses because it insists that FOO have a definition before it
    even looks for a :DOCUMENTATION property.

    The proper behavior should be to show the documentation on the typeout window
    and state "FOO has no definition" when appropriate.


    Thus two editor commands need to be fixed: Describe Variable at Point and
    Long Documentation.
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