Re: how to speed up Lisp devel time

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 10 Aug 2024 at 12:21, Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> wrote:

> > Interactive interface for more than one argument must be explicitly
> > designed. Asking for a more defaulting, more validating sequential
> > 'read-*'
>
> What do you mean by that, at some point a human has to do it?
>
> And that point is more than one?
>
> Hardly, even in the Emacs source, using `interface', there are
> tons of such interfaces setup with easy.
>
> And, note that I'm not proposing what you say, I'm proposing
> an interface interface so that you can set it up the way
> you like.

I am not against a way to describe a function’s argument types,
validation conditions and defaults per se.

I *am* against a specific user interface technique that takes those
descriptions and asks for each argument in a sequence of modal
prompts.

In my opinion, a prompt is okay for one single argument. Two, like in
‘query-replace’, is straining it somewhat; a recent version of Emacs
made it possible to recall both arguments from history at the same
time, and that was an improvement. Three prompts in a sequence is
something I would not be able to use without irritation. Now that
‘transient’ is in core, some kinds of complex interactive interfaces
can be based on it where necessary.