Re: Input method or help feature needed

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Kenichi Handa <handa@m17n.org>
> Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:14:04 +0900
> 
> > Still, why have 2 commands instead of just one?  We could make it use
> > all these improvements and enhancements.
> 
> (1) list-charset-chars lists characters with code-points of
>     the specified charset, list-script-chars lists
>     characters with Unicode code-points.

We could show Unicode codepoints by default and charset codepoints
with "C-u".  I doubt that any user would care about the latter, but
Emacs maintainers might.

> (2) These names are both charset and script, thus can't be
>     distinguished just by names.
> 	lao, tibetan, ethiopic, symbol

Are the results different if you interpret these as scripts vs
charsets?  If not, we don't need to care about the issue.

Anyway, having both "charset" and "script" in two almost identical
commands just adds to confusion, for anyone but specialists in this
particular area.  I would guess that "script" is more widely known, so
I would use that by default.  Again, we could use "C-u C-u" or some
such to show charsets instead.  Or maybe show charsets automatically
if the user types a charset name.

> (3) The name "list-charset-chars" is not suitable for what
>     list-script-chars does.  If we are going to have just
>     one command, the name should be, for instance,
>     list-characters.

Fine with me, we could have an alias for backward compatibility.

> > > > as is the time for producing the list of script names
> > > > if I type `?' at the "Script:" prompt.
> > > 
> > > Really?  When I tested it, it was almost instant.
> 
> > It's slow only the first time.  Try in a fresh Emacs session.
> 
> It's still instant with a fresh Emacs session in my
> environment.  Actually, the completion list is created by:
> 
> (mapcar 'symbol-name (char-table-extra-slot char-script-table 0))
> 
> It shouldn't be that slow.  Could you investigate why it's
> slow for you?

I cannot reproduce this anymore, so it's probably something that was
related to what my machine was doing in the background at the time.
Sorry for the noise.