bug#31749: 26.1; Improve eldoc message commands heuristic

bug#31749: 26.1; Improve eldoc message commands heuristic

[Carlos Pita]

The current criterion essentially removes the echo area message after
any command not whitelisted in eldoc-message-commands.

This is problematic since the list of relevant commands is unknown in
advance for evert possible extension package. One could argue that
extension package maintainers are responsible then, but I have had many
problems with eldoc behaving suboptimally in conjunction with company
mode, elpy mode and others (which are all quality extensions) that I
wouldn't put the burden of this on the maintainers.

Now, I might be completely wrong, but why don't you just check if
(current-message) is nil or not? This way if any command has written to
the echo area eldoc won't override its message. You can still keep the
whitelist in order to force override by eldoc (although I don't see much
value in this). You have probably thought many times about this
alternative and rejected for reasons I'm unable to see, but it's worth
to intent ;)

---

In GNU Emacs 26.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.30)
 of 2018-05-29 built on juergen
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bug#31749: 26.1; Improve eldoc message commands heuristic

[Noam Postavsky]

severity 31749 wishlist
quit

Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita@gmail.com> writes:

> The current criterion essentially removes the echo area message after
> any command not whitelisted in eldoc-message-commands.
>
> This is problematic since the list of relevant commands is unknown in
> advance for evert possible extension package. One could argue that
> extension package maintainers are responsible then, but I have had many
> problems with eldoc behaving suboptimally in conjunction with company
> mode, elpy mode and others (which are all quality extensions) that I
> wouldn't put the burden of this on the maintainers.
>
> Now, I might be completely wrong, but why don't you just check if
> (current-message) is nil or not? This way if any command has written to
> the echo area eldoc won't override its message. You can still keep the
> whitelist in order to force override by eldoc (although I don't see much
> value in this). You have probably thought many times about this
> alternative and rejected for reasons I'm unable to see, but it's worth
> to intent ;)

Not sure if anybody's considered this, perhaps you can try it out and
see if there are any drawbacks?

bug#31749: 26.1; Improve eldoc message commands heuristic

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita@gmail.com> writes:

> The current criterion essentially removes the echo area message after
> any command not whitelisted in eldoc-message-commands.

[...]

> Now, I might be completely wrong, but why don't you just check if
> (current-message) is nil or not? This way if any command has written to
> the echo area eldoc won't override its message. You can still keep the
> whitelist in order to force override by eldoc (although I don't see much
> value in this). You have probably thought many times about this
> alternative and rejected for reasons I'm unable to see, but it's worth
> to intent ;)

(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately got little response at
the time.)

The way Emacs is messaging things has been changed a bit in Emacs 28,
and fewer messages are overwritten in general, but I'm not sure whether
this also covers the eldoc messages being discussed here.

Do you have a concrete case where eldoc is overwriting a message that it
shouldn't?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#31749: 26.1; Improve eldoc message commands heuristic

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> The way Emacs is messaging things has been changed a bit in Emacs 28,
> and fewer messages are overwritten in general, but I'm not sure whether
> this also covers the eldoc messages being discussed here.
>
> Do you have a concrete case where eldoc is overwriting a message that it
> shouldn't?

More information was requested, but no response was given within a 
month, so I'm closing this bug report.  If the problem still exists,
please respond to this email and we'll reopen the bug report.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no