Re: Better default values for tooltip padding and `tooltip-hide-delay'?

[Christian Schlauer <cs-muelleimer-rubbish.bin@arcor.de>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

[...]

> More to the point, I'm using Ediff heavily for a long time, but until
> now didn't even know it popped tooltips, perhaps because I don't move
> the mouse pointer when I read the diffs.  (How many people do move the
> mouse in that mode, and why?)  Consequently, I cannot possibly agree
> that these tooltips ``annoy'' me.

On w32, the mouse pointer also moves to the little ediff-frame, so
most people never see these tooltips unless they move the mouse. (One
could count this as one more reason to remove the tooltips, IMO: most
people won't see them.)

I move the mouse when a single difference region extends over more
than, say, 10 rows of text and contains many small and subtle changes.
That is quite common when writing LaTeX and editing already existing
paragraphs, followed by `M-q' to beautify the paragraph again. And if
you change a word here, move a curly brace by one word there, exchange
a LaTeX macro by another, and so on you get a very `fragmented'
difference region (that is, with `fine differences') that contains
many unrelated changes, maybe 5 changes to the content and 7 to the
markup. Then I often use the mouse to `check them one by one'.

> Even for people who do move the mouse as a matter of habit when
> reading the diffs, I cannot easily see why the tooltips would annoy:
> they pop on the text line that is different from the one where the
> mouse pointer is, so if they obscure something, it's not the part of
> the text that one reads at that moment (assuming the mouse pointer
> closely follows the reader's eyes).

But in fragmented difference regions, the tooltip changes between
being in (1) the difference region or (2) in a `fine difference'
within the current difference region, so two different tooltips pop up
all the time. That's what I don't like.

> I also don't think that these tooltips are unnecessary; I think they
> might convey important information for someone who is not as fluent as
> I am with using visual diff tools such as Ediff.  So I think getting
> rid of the tooltips (suggested solution #1 above) is not a very good
> idea.

IMO, visual diff tools are easier to use than `diff -u'. Comparing the
font locking in buffer A and buffer B explains what is meant with the
colours, even to a beginner.

Also, these tooltips are only an explanation of the font locking.
There are no special functions on mouse-1/2/3 that need to be
explained.

[...]

> Finally, I think we could prevent the Ediff tooltips from obscuring
> buffer text being read, if Ediff would pop them farther from the mouse
> pointer.  Would that be a good-enough solution?

IMO, no. As I wrote above, in difference regions with many `fine
differences', the tooltips `Difference region 1 -- current' and `A
refinement of the current difference region' alternate all the time
when hovering with the mouse over the difference region -- annoying,
no matter how far from the mouse pointer.

(If the majority of people really wants to keep those tooltips, then,
IMO, we need a variable like `font-lock-maximum-decoration' for
tooltips, so that I can use tooltips, but at a lower level of
decoration (less tooltips).)
-- 
Christian Schlauer