Re: master 0023891e842: Support hints in the :repeat keyword of defvar-keymap for repeat-mode

[JD Smith <jdtsmith@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1824 bytes --]



> On May 7, 2024, at 2:27 AM, Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> wrote:
> 
>> The need to repeat the name of the command in order to specify its label
>> ("hint") makes the keymap definition twice as long and prone to errors.
>> For example, after adding "hints" to one of my keymaps I got:
>> [...]
>> I don't have a great idea for an alternative interface off the top of my
>> head, but if there's a way to avoid this duplication I think it would be
>> a significant improvement.

The original patch <https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=70576> re-used the (STRING . DEFN) menu form of key bindings to avoid such duplication, but was deemed too confusing for users.

> Unfortunately, duplication can be removed only at the cost of
> complicating the definitions of bindings that would be more
> hard to learn for users, and therefore will remain prone to errors.
> 
>> Lastly, it could be nice to make the appearance of the prompt more in
>> line with the read-multiple-choice prompt, which is conceptually very
>> similar.  Crucially, if the key is a character that occurs in the label,
>> it's better, IMO, to highlight the first occurrence of that character in
>> the label (as r-m-c does) than to prefix the label with that character.
>> We can reuse rmc--add-key-description for that purpose, as follows:
> 
> Nice idea.  A small problem is that when hints are not used,
> it inserts an extra space between the character and comma.
> But this is so minor that you could push the patch
> if you think it's not worth making code more complex
> by using rmc only when hints are specified.

That will save some space.  Remember though that many times the key will not appear in the hint. In that case it would be nice to have a connector character of some kind, e.g. `|':expreg.


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2379 bytes --]