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More useful mode help?


From: ndame
Subject: More useful mode help?
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:57:49 +0200 (CEST)

I wanted to kill a process from emacs, so I started
list-processes. Never having used it before I pressed k on a process
to kill it. Nothing. So I pressed ? to find out what key kills a
process.

The first thing in the mode help:

  Enabled minor modes: Abbrev Auto-Composition Auto-Compression
  Auto-Encryption Auto-Insert Blink-Cursor Column-Number
  Delete-Selection Diff-Auto-Refine Electric-Indent Electric-Pair
  File-Name-Shadow Font-Lock Global-Aggressive-Indent Global-Eldoc
  Global-Font-Lock Iswitchb Line-Number Minibuffer-Depth-Indicate
  Mouse-Wheel Recentf Save-Place Savehist Shell-Dirtrack Tooltip
  Transient-Mark Winner


Is there a reason why this comes first? Doesn't seem too relevant if
the user simply wants to find out about how to use the current mode.

Then comes the process description mentioning which hook run. Still
not very useful if one wants to simply use the mode.

Then come the keys:

  key             binding
  ---             -------

  TAB             forward-button
  ESC             Prefix Command
  SPC             scroll-up-command
  -               negative-argument
  0 .. 9          digit-argument
  <               beginning-of-buffer
  >               end-of-buffer
  ?               describe-mode
  S               tabulated-list-sort
  d               process-menu-delete-process
  g               revert-buffer
  h               describe-mode
  n               next-line
  p               previous-line
  q               quit-window
  DEL             scroll-down-command
  S-SPC           scroll-down-command
  <backtab>       backward-button
  <follow-link>   mouse-face
  <mouse-2>       mouse-select-window
  <remap>         Prefix Command

  C-M-i           backward-button



As you can see the single process binding is in the middle and it's d.

Shouldn't this info come first in the help? The actual keys bound by
the major mode. So in my case the beggining of the Help could have
been:

  Mode keys:

  d process-menu-delete-process


All the other info about hooks and minor modes and next-line,
etc. keys could come later.

Maybe the tabulated-list-sort key and the revert-buffer key could also
be listed along with d at the beginning, but I understand it may not
be trivial to determine automatically which other minor mode keys are
relevant.

But the major mode keys are surely relevant for usage, so they could
come first in Help.

 
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