Re: On the adoption of transient.el

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Rudolf Adamkovič <salutis@me.com> writes:

> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> On the other hand something has always felt off about transient, in the sense
>> that it is breaking some expected behaviour or couldn't pin-point yet, but
>> just unconsciously stumble over. 
>
> This is exactly how I feel about the "modern" interfaces in Emacs. I reported a
> bug in Embark recently, and because I could not select and copy the text, I
> ended up re-typing the text that was right in front of me in Emacs. Say what?
> For me, Emacs is a program where I expect to never waste time re-typing
> anything. Magit has a similar feel to it, and I can never be sure if the program
> will allow me to select text in the diverse parts of its user interface. In my
> opinion, such uncertainty is bad for power users. I would expect this from Apple
> or Microsoft software, because their latest “UX designers” surely know better
> than anyone, but in Emacs?

I personally feel that Magit has some really useful things to add to the
Emacs, and for some people it is even it's user interface. I would say
Transient is one of those things that are not for me, but that ceratinly
have their place.

To clarify, Transient interface feels like old dos reimplementation:
pick a choice from a list. Seems like a trend nowadays. During last
months I have seen some libraries anounced in c and c++ Reddit for
similar kind of interfaces. People call this "non-curses" TUIs. Sine GUI
entrance, this choices have migrated into pull-down or context sensitive
menus, and ocassional more explorative list like checkbox or radio box
panel or similar. I never had problem with TUIs and nowdays with
millenials grown up on computers, it seems like we don't need
educational and explorative GUIs, and are inclined to trade speed for
the looks. But I regress here. I personally don't need this explorative
part that a Transient menu offers to me, because it is a hickup

I recently wanted a Helm interface to switch between git branches. I
would like to be able to hit a key and have all local branches poped in
a Helm and just type a letter or two and hit enter to switch to a
branch. Thierry, Helm maintainer pointed to me that Magit offers an
inteface for this: I have to run Magit than bb and than Magit will offer
a completing read which will pop the asked Helm interface. To me this is
not a straightforward enough so I have actually coded my branch switcher
as a Helm addon.

But anyway, to Tarsius, and anyone else, I don't mean Magit is bad;
Magit has it's strenghts; in my opinion it is a sort-of pull-down
menu for TUIs, and it certainly has it's audience.