Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu

[Lennart Borgman]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Lennart!
>
>   
Hi Alan!
> > Submenus will reduce the number of items even if there is only two 
> > subitems and I believe that this will be helpful for the reasons I have 
> > tried to outline above.
> >     
>
> Submenus don't reduce the number of items.  They just make some of them
> invisible, thus _increasing_ search effort.  Activating a menu item when
> it is hidden within a sub-menu is much slower than when it is directly
> there.
>   
You are right. It has disadvantages that some items are invisible but it 
also has advantages. However I do not believe that accessing an item 
fast is of much importance in the help menus. Is it not more important 
to easily get an overview of what is there?

I think submenus can help very much for that. But they can also damage 
the overview if they are not logical (from the users point of view, not 
the developers of course).

> The way to reduce the number of items is to reduce the number of items.
> If 17 is too many (which I can quite well believe), then categorise them
> into "must have", "should have" and "nice to have", and get rid of all of
> the last lot.  :-)
>   
I did not find anything that was not useful in the help menu and I 
thought that the existence of the items had been discussed before.