Re: Proposal for an improved `help-for-help'

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 25.04.2021 02:48, Stefan Kangas wrote:

> The easiest way of fixing it is to change the separator to "\s\t"
> instead of just "\t".  It would be slightly less clean I guess, but
> since the screen is modal I suppose most people will never notice the
> difference.  WDYT?

Sure. I don't see a downside.

> > - Not a regression, old problem:
> >
> > Instructions say "Type ..., or SPC or DEL to scroll".
> >
> > But DEL here is actually <backspace>. If I just press Delete on the
> > keyboard, help-for-help exits instead of scrolling.
> >
> > And the target audience of help-for-help is probably at least as
> > ignorant as myself about the difference between DEL and Delete.
>
> As you say, this is an old problem.  For example `C-h k <backspace>'
> here gives a help screen that cryptically says "DEL (translated from
> <backspace>)".  I suppose most users have no idea what that means, other
> than some vague notion that "DEL is clearly just the same as backspace".
>
> I would prefer that <backspace> would just be printed as such,
> everywhere.  I'm guessing there are historical reasons for why this
> isn't already the case.  It would be great if we could fix this.

It's an implementation detail which leaks from the terminal keyboard 
support, which only supports a reduced set of keys.

IIUC, DEL is an ASCII code which backspace translates to on the 
terminal. You can also input it in a different way, e.g. by pressing C-? 
(on a terminal).

In a graphical frame, there is also <backspace> event which Emacs 
translates to DEL by default, but one can set different binding for it, 
even though that's inadvisable.

To sum up, there is a technical complexity to that problem, not just 
"old timers will hate change", so I'd leave that to a separate 
discussion, at least. With related <return>/RET and <tab>/TAB 
distinctions that Eli mentioned as well, which have caused their share 
of problems too.