info mode header line missing title

info mode header line missing title

[joseph]

One of the newer versions of emacs changed the format of the info mode header line to
exclude the current node.  Previously, the node appeared in both the header line and in
the mode line.  This is a greviously bad change because it immensely complicates seeing
what is going on in a complicated info file.

I use info to provide help subjects for users not familiar with emacs.  It is a complete
disaster having to explain that what screen the user is looking at cannot be found at the
top.  The user **must** look to the bottom to see what screen is being displayed.  This is
contrary to many people's intuition that the title of something is at the top.  Unfamiliar
users must have an intuitive place on the screen to see what screen they are viewing.  For
the primary thing at the top to be the title of something that is not visible is a huge
problem for new users to swallow.  It is just simply not intuitive.

You should reinstate the previous rule of including the current node in the header line. 
This could be a default mode that experts like the developer who instituted this change
might customize to remove the current node from the header line.
Joseph Patterson
VLSI Design Tools
P.O. Box 378
W. Boxford, MA 01885-0378
(978)352-7976
joseph@vlsidesigntools.com

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Kevin Rodgers]

joseph@vlsidesigntools.com wrote:
 > You should reinstate the previous rule of including the current node
 > in the header line.

I agree.  Ideally, "Prev: Previous node name" would be left justified,
"Next: Next node name" would be right justified, and "Node: This node
name" would be centered and "This node name" would be in a different
face from the other two node names.

 > This could be a default mode that experts like the developer who
 > instituted this change might customize to remove the current node
 > from the header line.

It is already customizable: C-h v Info-header-line

-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Juri Linkov]

Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> writes:
> joseph@vlsidesigntools.com wrote:
>  > You should reinstate the previous rule of including the current node
>  > in the header line.
>
> I agree.  Ideally, "Prev: Previous node name" would be left justified,
> "Next: Next node name" would be right justified, and "Node: This node
> name" would be centered and "This node name" would be in a different
> face from the other two node names.

Everyone agrees, but the problem is that all this text can't be
placed into the header line.  Look, for example, at the Info node
(info "(emacs)Save Keyboard Macro").  If it was displayed with the
node name in the header line, it would be so long:

File: emacs,  Node: Save Keyboard Macro,  Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyboard Macro Query,  Up: Keyboard Macros

and on most displays would be truncated to:

File: emacs,  Node: Save Keyboard Macro,  Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyb

OTOH, currently it is split to two lines - one for the header line, and
another as an unhidden part of the Info node header:

Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyboard Macro Query,  Up: Keyboard Macros
File: emacs,  Node: Save Keyboard Macro

But there is no multi-line header line possible to display both lines
in the header line.

>  > This could be a default mode that experts like the developer who
>  > instituted this change might customize to remove the current node
>  > from the header line.
>
> It is already customizable: C-h v Info-header-line

This variable is obsolete.  In CVS Emacs there is the new variable
`Info-use-header-line'.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Richard Stallman]

    (info "(emacs)Save Keyboard Macro").  If it was displayed with the
    node name in the header line, it would be so long:

    File: emacs,  Node: Save Keyboard Macro,  Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyboard Macro Query,  Up: Keyboard Macros

The node names really ought to be kept short enough that this line
will fit in 79 characters.

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Juri Linkov]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>     (info "(emacs)Save Keyboard Macro").  If it was displayed with the
>     node name in the header line, it would be so long:
>
>     File: emacs,  Node: Save Keyboard Macro,  Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyboard Macro Query,  Up: Keyboard Macros
>
> The node names really ought to be kept short enough that this line
> will fit in 79 characters.

I intentionally picked an example with the longest node names to
demonstrate the problem.  Usually most Info nodes have headers which
fit in 79 characters.

So we could try to change the format of the header line to display the
node name in it.  To save the space, the file name might be omitted
from the header line as well as from the first line of the Info buffer,
since it is visible in the mode line already and it is not as important
as the node name is.

In this format the aforementioned header line would look like this:

Save Keyboard Macro,  Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyboard Macro Query,  Up: Keyboard Macros

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>
> Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:54:34 +0300
> Cc: ihs_4664@yahoo.com, bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> > The node names really ought to be kept short enough that this line
> > will fit in 79 characters.
> 
> I intentionally picked an example with the longest node names to
> demonstrate the problem.  Usually most Info nodes have headers which
> fit in 79 characters.

Please show some statistics to back up this assertion.  In my
experience, a large percent of Info nodes have long names so that the
header line overflows the 79-character limit.

IIRC, that fact was one of the main motivations for removing the node
name from the header line.

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Andreas Schwab]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Please show some statistics to back up this assertion.  In my
> experience, a large percent of Info nodes have long names so that the
> header line overflows the 79-character limit.

I can confirm this.  On my system more than 50% of the Info nodes would
overflow the limit if the node name would be included in the header line.
Without it, only about 10% remain.

$ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | wc -l
16965
$ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | sed -n 's/^[^,]*, *//; /.\{80,\}/p' | wc -l
9133
$ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | sed -n 's/^[^,]*,[^,]*, *//; /.\{80,\}/p' | wc -l
2094

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux AG, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Richard Stallman]

    I can confirm this.  On my system more than 50% of the Info nodes would
    overflow the limit if the node name would be included in the header line.
    Without it, only about 10% remain.

I generally made an effort to make these lines fit, but other people
often make very long node names, so I am not surprised by your results.

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Juri Linkov]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:
> "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> Please show some statistics to back up this assertion.  In my
>> experience, a large percent of Info nodes have long names so that the
>> header line overflows the 79-character limit.
>
> I can confirm this.  On my system more than 50% of the Info nodes would
> overflow the limit if the node name would be included in the header line.
> Without it, only about 10% remain.
>
> $ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | wc -l
> 16965
> $ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | sed -n 's/^[^,]*, *//; /.\{80,\}/p' | wc -l
> 9133

This query is not quite right.  The proposed format was without the
"Node: " prefix.  So more proper query is:

  $ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | sed -n 's/^[^,]*, *Node: //; /.\{80,\}/p' | wc -l
                                                        ======

It gives on my system 32% of nodes whose headers would be longer than
80 characters, against 8% of header lines without the node name at all.

But fourfold increase is no good.  So I propose another improvement:
to replace prefixes "Next: ", "Prev: " and "Up: " with 1-character
arrow glyphs representing their meanings ("<" - prev,  ">" - next,
"^" - up).  With this change the header line:

Save Keyboard Macro,  Next: Edit Keyboard Macro,  Prev: Keyboard Macro Query,  Up: Keyboard Macros

would be displayed as:

Save Keyboard Macro >Edit Keyboard Macro <Keyboard Macro Query ^Keyboard Macros

On my estimations this gives the same percent of nodes (on my system 9%)
as for currently truncated header lines without the node name.
The query to prove it is:

$ zgrep -h '^File: .*Node:' *.gz | sed -n 's/^[^,]*, *Node: //; /.\{99,\}/p' | wc -l

since the length of the saved text ", Next:, Prev:, Up:" is 19 characters.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Richard Stallman]

    would be displayed as:

    Save Keyboard Macro >Edit Keyboard Macro <Keyboard Macro Query ^Keyboard Macros

This would be fine for advanced users, but is it clear to beginners?
I am not sure.

Also this would tend to suggest that < and > are info commands for
Previous and Next, but in fact they mean "first" and "last".

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Juri Linkov]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>     would be displayed as:
>
>     Save Keyboard Macro >Edit Keyboard Macro <Keyboard Macro Query ^Keyboard Macros
>
> This would be fine for advanced users, but is it clear to beginners?
> I am not sure.
>
> Also this would tend to suggest that < and > are info commands for
> Previous and Next, but in fact they mean "first" and "last".

ASCII characters might be not too clear, but 1-character wide bitmaps
displaying the graphical images of arrows should be clear for all users.

Example:

(defconst info-next-pbm
"P1
10 10\",
0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0"
  "PBM data for next node icon.")

There are exactly the same arrow shapes visible in the tool bar
(though, with a bigger size), so users are already familiar with these
arrows and it will be clear for users that the same meanings of arrows
(next, prev and up) is valid for the header line too.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Richard Stallman]

    ASCII characters might be not too clear, but 1-character wide bitmaps
    displaying the graphical images of arrows should be clear for all users.

That might be a good thing to use on graphical displays.
It is not an option on text terminals.

One of the things that gives the wrong idea is writing "<" before a
name.  That order does not fit the intended meaning.  It is
reminiscent of redirections, which are completely different.

So if we do use this on graphical displays, it might be best to
arrange it like this:

   FROM> ^UP^ >TO

Or maybe like this,

   FROM> HERE ^UP^ >TO

using a bold font for HERE.

Re: info mode header line missing title

[Kevin Rodgers]

Richard Stallman wrote:
 > One of the things that gives the wrong idea is writing "<" before a
 > name.  That order does not fit the intended meaning.  It is
 > reminiscent of redirections, which are completely different.
 >
 > So if we do use this on graphical displays, it might be best to
 > arrange it like this:
 >
 >    FROM> ^UP^ >TO

I don't share your concern about users confusing "<" with the shell's
redirection operator, but why is ">" before a node name any different?

I like the balanced ^UP^ notation; why not use it everywhere?

Here's what I have in mind:

<FROM< ^UP^ >TO>

Also, is it feasible to left-justify FROM, right-justify TO, and center UP?

-- 
Kevin Rodgers