From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Experimentally unbind M-o on the trunk Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2021 18:58:42 +0200 Message-ID: <83mtwah77h.fsf@gnu.org> References: <8ed9b43502ae1480e06b@heytings.org> <83r1lohqoc.fsf@gnu.org> <834kiiitxn.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="3716"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: bugs@gnu.support, ams@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, gregory@heytings.org, matt@rfc20.org, larsi@gnus.org To: Yuri Khan Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Feb 11 18:01:43 2021 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1lAFLb-0000sF-C9 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 18:01:43 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57150 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1lAFLa-00054J-BR for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 12:01:42 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:48034) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1lAFIj-0003d8-H8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 11:58:45 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:45946) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1lAFIh-0004Z3-36; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 11:58:43 -0500 Original-Received: from 84.94.185.95.cable.012.net.il ([84.94.185.95]:4641 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1lAFIc-0007Mm-KW; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 11:58:39 -0500 In-Reply-To: (message from Yuri Khan on Thu, 11 Feb 2021 23:08:53 +0700) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:264409 Archived-At: > From: Yuri Khan > Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2021 23:08:53 +0700 > Cc: Matt Armstrong , Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen , "Alfred M. Szmidt" , > Gregory Heytings , Jean Louis , > Emacs developers > > The discovery scenario is: I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I > can progressively narrow down the command space by choosing a submenu > at each step. Once I’ve found the command I need, I can execute it > right away and be done with it. That only works well if you can guess, up front, which top-level menu item has the command you are looking for. Which is not easy, except for a few trivial operations, especially with very large and feature-rich programs like Emacs. Traversing the entire menu structure looking for what you want is not my idea of good time, even though I have much more patience doing that than most newbies nowadays. Of course, putting more command on our menus cannot possibly hurt, quite the contrary, so I'm not arguing against that. I just very much doubt we will be able to put there any significant fraction of the hundreds of important commands we have to really make a difference. To say nothing of the fact that there's a fashion out there to turn off the menu bar very early in the user's learning curve. Therefore, the idea to make discovery easier by means other than the menus is a good one -- provided that we can find a way of implementing that in a convenient and unintrusive manner. > I will even go so far as to claim that such Emacs keymaps as C-x v > are poor man’s menus — they let the user execute commands using long > key sequences without the benefit of providing discovery and visual > reassurance. ??? Typing '?' or C-h in the middle of any key sequence should (and usually does) provide discovery.