On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 1:53 AM John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com> wrote:

>>>>> Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> Basically, as soon as isearch starts, you should see something like this.
> Toggles [M-s]: [w] Word OFF [_] Symbol OFF ['] Character-Fold ON [r] Regexp
> OFF I-search: search string here

Artur, does this mean the I-search prompt would be two-lines high in the
minibuffer, instead of one-line? If so, I would definitely want a way to
disable it; if I already know the options, it shortens the text window for
documentation I wouldn't need.

For new users, I'm not sure whether it should be on by default or not. It's
handy, for sure, but distracting maybe? I can't say without that mindset. I'd
love to hear from some users to see what they think.

John

In the wake of magit, Mickey Petersen (who wrote Mastering Emacs) wrote a package called discover.el (blog intro + screenshot): https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/discoverel-discover-emacs-context-menus

This might be a good direction for the conversation.

I've been an emacs user for ~2 years now. I think some minimal documentation / toggles in the magit spirit would go a long way in demystifying the emacs behavior.

As noted by someone else, I would consider it critical to indicate somehow that there are other modifiers and options.

I would, of course, want a toggle for this.

Some of the things that have made my life as a newbie better were:

- discovering which function I just triggered with my keypress

- discovering which keypress I can use for the function I just called

- discovering how I can modify the default behavior of an emacs function

Any way in which emacs can help with these things is good for a beginner, to help them map emacs behavior with emacs terminology.