why all the <help-echo> keys in the output of `C-h l'?

why all the <help-echo> keys in the output of `C-h l'?

[Drew Adams]

The Elisp manual says that a `help-echo' event is "generated when a mouse
pointer moves onto a portion of buffer text which has a `help-echo' text
property".    ("onto" should probably be "over", BTW)

That is no doubt the explanation for seeing lots of <help-echo> "input
keystrokes" in the output of `C-h l'. I see that as more annoying than
useful. If others think it is useful, can we at least let users turn it off?

Also, I thought we were going to increase the number of keystrokes output by
`C-h l' in this release, and we even talked about possibly making that
number a user option. It is apparently still hard-coded at 100, which is far
too short, IMO - especially with all of the pseudo-user keystrokes we see
now.

If it must be hard-coded, I'd rather see 1000 than 100. At least that would
show enough real input that a user could dig out what s?he really did, after
perhaps filtering out extraneous stuff.

Speaking of filtering (post Godot?), users should ideally be able to filter
the `C-h l' display using, e.g., a menu or buttons, to eliminate certain
kinds of keystrokes (e.g. mouse, help-echo). That is, they would be able to
control what is shown, to help them see what happened.

Re: why all the <help-echo> keys in the output of `C-h l'?

[Richard Stallman]

    That is no doubt the explanation for seeing lots of <help-echo> "input
    keystrokes" in the output of `C-h l'. I see that as more annoying than
    useful. If others think it is useful, can we at least let users turn it off?

We could turn off the storing of those events in the history buffer.
It might be a good idea, though there are cases where it would be
better to include them.

But let's not do this now.

    Also, I thought we were going to increase the number of keystrokes output by
    `C-h l' in this release, and we even talked about possibly making that
    number a user option. It is apparently still hard-coded at 100, which is far
    too short, IMO - especially with all of the pseudo-user keystrokes we see
    now.

We could easily change it to 200.  Let's do that.  That is safe and
easy.