Re: Experimentally unbind M-o on the trunk

[Yuri Khan]

On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 at 02:26, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > > ??? Typing '?' or C-h in the middle of any key sequence should (and
> > > usually does) provide discovery.
> >
> > Not really. In a fresh ‘emacs -Q’, when I press ‘C-x ?’, I get a help
> > buffer that has three logical pages and is 10.5 screenfuls long.
>
> Yes, and that's bad because...?

I’m ranting about a particular kind of discovery here, where you
progressively choose among a small number of possibilities. When
looking for C-x v d, I don’t need to know about 100+ characters I can
enter via C-x 8. Nor the 20+ commands starting with C-x C-k. In
progressive discovery, those would be collapsed to a “C-x 8: insert
special characters” and “C-x C-k: keyboard macros”.

> > Also, importantly, when I ask for help, I cannot proceed to
> > immediately execute the command I found, nor continue the discovery. I
> > have to re-type the sequence from the start.
>
> You lost me here.  The list popped up when you type '?' shows what you
> should type -- that's "proceed to immediately execute the command you
> found".  You should retype it, yes, but what would you suggest
> instead? ask the user to remember what was typed before the question
> mark?

You’re treating the act of typing a sequence of keys as an atomic
operation. For you, it probably is. You start from a known place,
navigate the three keymaps in a series of leaps, arrive at your
desired destination. A novice user does not think or work like that.
C-x, v, and d are three distinct jumps. After each jump, they want to
stop and look around, in order to decide where to head next. But the
act of looking around teleports them back to where they started.

> > (I can also click on the blue underlined text, which does not
> > execute the command but displays extended help on it. Thanks, Emacs,
> > how do I go back?
>
> Back from where?  You didn't go anywhere, you were just shown help.
> Just continue what you were typing.  Emacs isn't modal, at least not
> normally, so "going back" from what it pops up makes little sense.

Before I was shown help for, let’s say, ‘dired’, the same help buffer
contained a list of commands.

> > There’s no ← icon on the toolbar
>
> But there's that "[back]" button at the end of the help text...

Yes, and getting to that requires either knowing that it’s there, or
scrolling through the whole list.

> > and the History Back button on my mouse causes a “<mouse-8> is
> > undefined” message in the echo area, and the context menu mouse
> > button marks a region. (Out-of-character: Yes, I know about ‘l’ and
> > clicking the (Help) button in the modeline. My character doesn’t.))
>
> Are we still discussing discoverability, or are we venting?  How is
> the fact that your system has a misconfigured mouse relevant to the
> issue at hand -- which was discoverability?

Partly venting, yes. In what way is my mouse misconfigured? Are you
telling me there is a mouse button binding in ‘help-mode’ for
‘help-go-back’ but it’s assuming a different button than <mouse-8>?

> > On a semi-related note, how do I go back up from a submenu in ‘tmm-menubar’?
>
> Why should anyone use tmm-menubar when we have menus on all types of
> displays?  (And no, I don't know, I never used tmm-menubar.)

As I mentioned earlier, tmm-menubar has the desirable property of
supporting navigation through menus with mnemonic keys. The GTK menu
only lets me select items with the mouse or arrow keys.