Re: keeping the arglist

[cfry@MIT.EDU (Christopher Fry)]

> >*ARGLIST-ON-SPACE* = T shows the args of a function after typing the
> >function name.  However, as soon as I start to type the first argument, the
> >arglist disappears, and I forget what the other arguments are.  Supposedly
> >there is a flag one can set to have the arglist stick around longer, but I
> >can't find anything in the docs.  Anyone know how to do this?
> >
> (setq *clear-mini-buffer* nil)
Thanks to Tom McDougal for bringing up something that bugs me a lot.
Cartier's fix is way better than nothing. But this is an important facility
and deserves some hacking.

With (setq *clear-mini-buffer* nil)
When you've got (foo (undefined-fn 
                                   ^ cursor
then minibuffer still shows foo's arglist. It should say "UNDEFINED-FN is undefined.".
When you've got (foo (bar) 
                           ^ cursor
then minibuffer still shows bar's arglist, but should show foo's.
A really clever implementation would notice in
 (let ((a ...)))  
that A is not suppose to be a function. There are a finite but number of such situations 
in Common Lisp.

Before the big fix, I vote for putting *clear-mini-buffer* on the Environment dialog
just under *ARGLIST-ON-SPACE*.