Re: Patch to disable links line in *info* buffer

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     As I read the comments, the new behaviour with two
>     almost identical header lines was a change to the worse.
> 
> Why do you think so?  A few people say they don't like it,

A few?  The majority of those who commented on this dislike it:

David Ponce started by reporting the duplicate header line as a bug.
You responded that it was deliberate.
Stefan, Eli and Miles spoke against it (or at least suggested
various methods for hiding it or making it optional).
Francoise Romain send you a patch to implement Miles' suggestion.
I also spoke against it and sent a different proposal 
(adding `+' to toggle the visibility of the extra header line).
Alex Schroeder said he doesn't need it either.

> but nobody has given any reasons.

I think Eli gives the reason very clearly:  

        It looks like a display bug.

.. and it has already been reported as such a few days after it was
change in CVS.  So imagine the number of bug reports we'll get when
21.4 is released...

> 
>     It never occurred to me that copying part of the header would
>     be useful
> 
> People complained when it was not possible.  In response, we made a
> special command for doing it, but hardly anyone knows about that
> command so it is not a very good solution.

That "hardly anyone knows about that command" is hardly a good
argument to introduce a "display bug"... 
The command is right there on the Info menu.

Only Robert J. Chassell seems to really need to copy from the header
lines regularly -- and to be able to do that, he already knows that
setting Info-use-header-line to nil allows him to do that.

Can't we simply put that advice into NEWS or PROBLEMS or mention it
somewhere in info's doc string or its info file -- and remove the
extra header line.


In any case, I think it is a good idea to add a mouse-3 sub-menu/command
to header-lines and mode-lines to copy its contents to the kill-ring.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk