send-invisible is not an obvious name

send-invisible is not an obvious name

[Francesco Potorti`]

I suggest aliasing it to one or both of
 enter-password
 password-enter

Re: send-invisible is not an obvious name

[Miles Bader]

Francesco Potorti` <pot@gnu.org> writes:
> I suggest aliasing it to one or both of
>  enter-password
>  password-enter

The normal usage of this command is to call it from a hook that
recognizes a `Password:' (or similar) prompt, prompts the user in the
minibuffer, and calls send-invisible.

I suppose sometimes a user wants to use it in another context, and so
can call it manually, but the current name seems perfectly accurate and
reasonable enough to me.

-Miles
-- 
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.  -- Pogo

Re: send-invisible is not an obvious name

[Francesco Potorti`]

> > I suggest aliasing it to one or both of
> >  enter-password
> >  password-enter
> 
> The normal usage of this command is to call it from a hook

I know.  But just yesterday I worked with a standard 21.2 installation,
where the prompt of scp was not recognised (it is in the current
pretest).  I had to enter my password and since I knew that a comand
existed to do that I tried to gess its name, to no avail.  I had to do a
search for `passord' in the manual to find it.

Since Emacs cannot know of all the programs that ask for a password, and
givent that this is a very important issue, especially when you are not
working on your box, I'd say that:
- the send-invisible command should have at least the two aliases above
- it should be in the comint menu (I do not use menus myself, so I do
  not know whether it is already there) with a comprehensible name

Re: send-invisible is not an obvious name

[Miles Bader]

Francesco Potorti` <pot@gnu.org> writes:
> I had to enter my password and since I knew that a command
> existed to do that I tried to gess its name, to no avail.  I had to do a
> search for `password' in the manual to find it.

I'd say that's what you're supposed to do, and if you could find it by
searching the manual, then things are working properly.  We can't encode
documentation into all function names!

> - the send-invisible command should have at least the two aliases above

I disagree.

> - it should be in the comint menu (I do not use menus myself, so I do
>   not know whether it is already there) with a comprehensible name

That would be reasonable; however I think `Send input invisibly' (or
`without echoing') is a pretty good title for this menu entry...

-Miles
-- 
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.  -- Pogo

Re: send-invisible is not an obvious name

[Francesco Potorti`]

> > I had to enter my password and since I knew that a command
> > existed to do that I tried to gess its name, to no avail.  I had to do a
> > search for `password' in the manual to find it.
> 
> I'd say that's what you're supposed to do, and if you could find it by
> searching the manual, then things are working properly.  We can't encode
> documentation into all function names!

I was not clear.  I had to look in the manual and to a M-s password RET,
which is not the normal way, and found obviously many instances of the
word before finding what I was looking for.

Okay, this may be a shortcoming of the manual, and indexing
send-invisible properly would correct the problem.

What I meant is that it is not reasonable that a user should look in the
manual for such a basic functionality.  It should be immediate and
natural.

[about a mneu entry]
> That would be reasonable; however I think `Send input invisibly' (or
> `without echoing') is a pretty good title for this menu entry...

Tha would do.  But it makes no sense to a user.  It only makes sense to
a programmer.  The user only wants to write invisibly when entering a
password, and that is what he is looking for.  A programmer knows that
this is only an instance of a wider range of possibilities, but as for
the practical usage, that function is in fact made for passwords, so the
generalization in the name is only theoretical.