Re: "What's This?" in Describe submenu

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Richard Stallman wrote:

   A discussion in November 2002, based on noting that Windows menus have
   a "What's This" feature, concluded that (present and former) Windows
   users would recognize the name "What's This" and know what to do with
   it.  So it would help them.

   I have never been a Windows user, so I can't judge for myself.
   Do those here with Windows experience agree that that menu item
   will be understood by many users?

I can not tell about MS Windows either, but I have played around with
the KDE "What's This" feature and that appears to do something very
different.

In Emacs, if you select "What's This", nothing happens to the mouse
cursor shape and if you then click mouse-1 in the minibuffer, the
`mouse-drag-region' docstring shows up in an Emacs buffer.  From
playing around with the KDE feature, I would guess that a KDE user
would expect the mouse cursor shape to change to an arrow with a
question mark and if you then click in the minibuffer, a reasonably
large tooltip would pop up explaining what this area is used for (as
echo area and as minibuffer).

In other words, in KDE the "this" in "What's This" seems to refer to
the area in which you click and, as I pointed out before, if you click
on a menu bar item, usually no doc whatsoever pops up.

Anyway, it would seem that one way or the other, it should be possible
to come up with a single name that can be reasonably understood by
everybody, regardless of the operating system they are using.

Sincerely,

Luc.