Handling of disabled commands is inconvenient

Handling of disabled commands is inconvenient

[Klaus Zeitler]

When I type a disabled command, e.g. C-<next> (for scroll-left), emacs splits
the current window into two windows and displays in the lower window
(called *Disabled Command*):

--- snip ---
You have typed <C-next>, invoking disabled command scroll-left.
It is disabled because new users often find it confusing.
Here's the first part of its description:

   Scroll selected window display ARG columns left.
   Default for ARG is window width minus 2.
   Value is the total amount of leftward horizontal scrolling in
   effect after the change.
   If SET_MINIMUM is non-nil, the new scroll amount becomes the
   lower bound for automatic scrolling, i.e. automatic scrolling
   will not scroll a window to a column less than the value returned
--- snip ---

And the minibuffer says: "Type y, n, ! or SPC (the space bar): "

Unfortunately (as long as I haven't read the contents of the "*Disabled
Command*" window) I have no clue what the answers "y, n, ! or SPC" will mean.
No other keys (besides C-G) seem to be allowed. I can't scroll the "*Disabled
Command*" window, i.e. I have to cancel the command with C-g. Now emacs will
delete the "*Disabled Command*" window, then I need to switch to the
"*Disabled Command*" buffer, read the contents of this buffer, switch back
to my original buffer and finally, now that I know what the keys
"y, n, ! or SPC" mean, I can re-execute the original (disabled) command.

Maybe I overlooked something and this can be done easier. To me it looks as
if this is more confusing than the command itself might be.

Klaus



-- 
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|  Klaus Zeitler      Lucent Technologies  |
|  Email:             kzeitler@lucent.com  |
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Re: Handling of disabled commands is inconvenient

[Richard Stallman]

The current development version of Emacs includes an explanation of
these options in the buffer.