From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: 23 Apr 2002 13:03:41 +0900 Organization: The XEmacs Project Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <87vgal3w79.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87vgak30cw.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <7263-Mon22Apr2002224014+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019534784 20952 127.0.0.1 (23 Apr 2002 04:06:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 04:06:24 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Eli Zaretskii , xemacs-design@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16zrZP-0005Ro-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 06:06:23 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16zraQ-0008RH-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 06:07:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zrZG-0002dv-00; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 00:06:14 -0400 Original-Received: from tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.98.109]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zrXb-0002Xr-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 00:04:31 -0400 Original-Received: from steve by tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 16zrWo-0000Rl-00; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 13:03:42 +0900 Original-To: Brady Montz In-Reply-To: Original-Lines: 54 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.4 (Common Lisp) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.51 (Python 2.1.3 on Linux/i686) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:3069 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:3069 >>>>> "Brady" == Brady Montz writes: Brady> For this particular example, a popup menu of common "what Brady> you might want to see after reading this help text" actions Brady> might be the best menu modification. Algorithm? Or are we going to have to rely on massive effort from volunteers? :-) Brady> I dislike relying on having things like only in a menu Brady> though, since it's not obvious to right-click when you want Brady> "more." A little "click here for more" button is more to my Brady> liking. But more what? Does that mean go from the docstring to Info page (and should that be the User Guide or the Lispref?), or the mode's keymap wallpaper, or the mode docstring, or hyperapropos, or Info index? Or (dare I say it?) help-on-help? I think one problem is that most of the people working on (X)Emacs cut their teeth on permuted indicies, man -k, apropos, whatis, etc commands. Possibly if `C-h a' were glossed "search for functions (and variables) with similar names" instead of "apropos"? (Would "Names like ... (C-h a)" do it?) >> Is "C-h C-f" supposed to show the Info node for a command you >> type? If so, the equivalent command works for me in Emacs with >> gnus. Brady> Doesn't work on my xemacs installation, so it's probably Brady> just an install issue. Gnus is bundled with Emacs. I wonder if Eli would get the same results on an unbundled package. I'm pretty sure that's why we don't pick it up. Brady> Help shouldn't require help. Have you ever tried to use Windows help? I have _never_ used Windows for anything other than sanity-check Cygwin builds of XEmacs and that wonderful doc2txt utility that MS Office provides. But I'm better at navigating Windows help than any of the Windows users I know -- if they don't understand, they ask; if they don't get a useful answer, they give up or look in the deadtree manual. I'm afraid that "help shouldn't require help" is just wishful thinking. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.