Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[Karl Fogel]

On 23 Dec 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>The function y-or-n-p originally used to read only a small set of
>character commands.  In Emacs 27.1 we changed it to use
>read-from-minibuffer, which means users now can easily switch out of
>the minibuffer while the question they were asked is still not
>answered.
>
>This could confuse some users, especially if they aren't used to
>working with recursive minibuffers.  Richard tells me it happened to
>him several times.
>
>Would it make sense to add a user option to disallow switching from
>the minibuffer in the middle of y-or-n-p?  Then people who get
>confused by this could set it to avoid the confusion.

I'm surprised that the intersection of these two sets is non-empty:

a) Users who would know enough to look for and set such an option.

b) Users who would be confused by what happens after they switch away from a 
y-or-n-p minibuffer in mid-question.

However, Richard is clearly in (a), and apparently he is in (b) as well.  So 
there's an existence proof.  I have no idea how many elements that set has, but 
if it has 1, it probably has more?  So sure, given the recent behavior change 
in 27.1, having this option could be useful to them.

(And, though I know some disagree, I don't think there's much cost to adding 
little options like this.  Emacs already has a zillion of them, so targeted 
reading and discovery are the strategy everyone already uses to find them 
anyway, which means adding a new one does not increase the complexity of Emacs 
in a problematic way IMHO.)

Best regards,
-Karl