lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Robert Pluim]

Hi,

Info mode defines a large number of interactive commands starting with
"Info" rather than info, which always causes me to miss them until I
remember the capital I. Would a patch creating lowercase aliases be
acceptable?

ObDamnTheTorpedoes: or rename them all, and create obsolete aliases
using the old spelling?

Thanks

Robert

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Mon, Nov 20, 2017, 9:02 AM Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> ObDamnTheTorpedoes: or rename them all, and create obsolete aliases
> using the old spelling?
>

I'd love that too, +1 for consistency.

> --

Kaushal Modi

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RE: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Drew Adams]

>> ObDamnTheTorpedoes: or rename them all, and create
>> obsolete aliases using the old spelling?
>
> I'd love that too, +1 for consistency.

I believe it was by design, to easily distinguish the
main user-used things (command, options) when using
completion - IOW, to filter out noise.

That doesn't mean there couldn't be a redesign.  But
I don't see why we would obsolete the original names.

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 15:01:52 +0100
> 
> Info mode defines a large number of interactive commands starting with
> "Info" rather than info, which always causes me to miss them until I
> remember the capital I. Would a patch creating lowercase aliases be
> acceptable?

That would be a strange thing to do, I think.  We never did that in
any other case.

Why cannot you make these aliases in your customizations?

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Robert Pluim]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>
>> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 15:01:52 +0100
>> 
>> Info mode defines a large number of interactive commands starting with
>> "Info" rather than info, which always causes me to miss them until I
>> remember the capital I. Would a patch creating lowercase aliases be
>> acceptable?
>
> That would be a strange thing to do, I think.  We never did that in
> any other case.
>
> Why cannot you make these aliases in your customizations?

I can always do that. I just find it somewhat un-regular that the
commands for info all start with 'I', hence my desire to fix it.

Robert

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 19:02:12 +0100
> 
> > Why cannot you make these aliases in your customizations?
> 
> I can always do that. I just find it somewhat un-regular that the
> commands for info all start with 'I', hence my desire to fix it.

It may be irregular, but it's there for a very long time, and AFAIR no
one complained about that.  So I see no reason to put in Emacs
something that is your personal preference.

(E.g., I find function names like foo->bar also irregular -- this is
Lisp, not C -- but that's just my personal stylistic preference, so I
keep it to myself.)

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Stefan Monnier]

> (E.g., I find function names like foo->bar also irregular -- this is
> Lisp, not C -- but that's just my personal stylistic preference, so I
> keep it to myself.)

Not sure which foo->bar you're referring to, but I plead guilty to using
such names.  I just want to clarify that I didn't take them from C but
from Scheme,


        Stefan

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Info mode defines a large number of interactive commands starting with
> "Info" rather than info, which always causes me to miss them until I
> remember the capital I. Would a patch creating lowercase aliases be
> acceptable?

As explained by Drew, info.el uses the convention that "normal" commands
start with "info-" and keeps "Info-" for those commands which are
unlikely to be used via `M-x`.

I think there was a similar idea with variables, tho I don't offhand see
what's the specific purpose (maybe for M-x set-variable ?).

So I don't think we should do such a blind renaming.  But OTOH, renaming
a few specific commands might make sense, if there's a good case for
using them from M-x.


        Stefan

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Info mode defines a large number of interactive commands starting with
  > "Info" rather than info, which always causes me to miss them until I
  > remember the capital I. Would a patch creating lowercase aliases be
  > acceptable?

The reason for this prefix distinction is to make completion of info-
commands work better -- because the Info- commands do not get in the
way.  The idea is that the Info- commands will rarely be entered in
M-x because they are bound to keys.

We can change this if it will help users, but how and why would it help them?

What is the scenario in which you type their names?





-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Robert Pluim]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Info mode defines a large number of interactive commands starting with
>   > "Info" rather than info, which always causes me to miss them until I
>   > remember the capital I. Would a patch creating lowercase aliases be
>   > acceptable?
>
> The reason for this prefix distinction is to make completion of info-
> commands work better -- because the Info- commands do not get in the
> way.  The idea is that the Info- commands will rarely be entered in
> M-x because they are bound to keys.
>

OK

> We can change this if it will help users, but how and why would it help them?
>
> What is the scenario in which you type their names?

I was looking for the Info command to follow an info link. In this
particular case, using the mouse would have worked, but I prefer
knowing what's going on behind the scene.

Anyway, seems like I'm almost alone in this. defalias in .emacs it is

Robert

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Stefan Monnier]

> I was looking for the Info command to follow an info link. In this
> particular case, using the mouse would have worked, but I prefer
> knowing what's going on behind the scene.

Which command was it?

> Anyway, seems like I'm almost alone in this. defalias in .emacs it is

As I said, which command uses Info- and which command uses info- is
a judgment call.  Maybe we can revise this judgment for the command(s)
you use from M-x.


        Stefan

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Robert Pluim]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I was looking for the Info command to follow an info link. In this
>> particular case, using the mouse would have worked, but I prefer
>> knowing what's going on behind the scene.
>
> Which command was it?
>

Info-goto-node, which I found after an entertaining chase through
several different parts of gnus

>> Anyway, seems like I'm almost alone in this. defalias in .emacs it is
>
> As I said, which command uses Info- and which command uses info- is
> a judgment call.  Maybe we can revise this judgment for the command(s)
> you use from M-x.

I doubt it's worth it just for this one command

Robert

Re: lowercase aliases for Info-* commands?

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> I was looking for the Info command to follow an info link. In this
>>> particular case, using the mouse would have worked, but I prefer
>>> knowing what's going on behind the scene.
>> Which command was it?
> Info-goto-node, which I found after an entertaining chase through
> several different parts of gnus

I see.  It's not considered "worthy of M-x" because it's bound to `g`.
Some people prefer using M-x to avoid having to remember keyboard
shortcuts, tho, so maybe we should make it available with a "info-"
prefix, indeed.


        Stefan