Re: Experimentally unbind M-o on the trunk

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

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 23:58, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > I will even go so far as to claim that such Emacs keymaps as C-x v
> > are poor man’s menus — they let the user execute commands using long
> > key sequences without the benefit of providing discovery and visual
> > reassurance.
>
> ??? Typing '?' or C-h in the middle of any key sequence should (and
> usually does) provide discovery.

Not really. In a fresh ‘emacs -Q’, when I press ‘C-x ?’, I get a help
buffer that has three logical pages and is 10.5 screenfuls long. In
the discovery scenario, which supposes I don’t know what I’m looking
for but will know when I see it, I have to scroll through all that
until I find the ‘C-x v d’ binding I was looking for. It says,
literally:

    C-x v d    vc-dir

so if I don’t already know vc- means version control, I may not
recognize that command as the one I want.

Also, importantly, when I ask for help, I cannot proceed to
immediately execute the command I found, nor continue the discovery. I
have to re-type the sequence from the start. (I can also click on the
blue underlined text, which does not execute the command but displays
extended help on it. Thanks, Emacs, how do I go back? There’s no ←
icon on the toolbar, and the History Back button on my mouse causes a
“<mouse-8> is undefined” message in the echo area, and the context
menu mouse button marks a region. (Out-of-character: Yes, I know about
‘l’ and clicking the (Help) button in the modeline. My character
doesn’t.))

Compare with the menu: Tools (which, while looking suspiciously like
the “everything else” bin, is likely to contain the functionality I
want) → Version Control (yes!) → VC Dir (somewhat poorly named but
okay). *This* is discovery.

On a semi-related note, how do I go back up from a submenu in ‘tmm-menubar’?