Re: "What's This?" in Describe submenu

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:56:06 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>
> Cc: rudalics@gmx.at, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> "If you click mouse-1 on the minibuffer or fringe, the KDE user (and
> Lennart claimed the Microsoft user too) would expect a tooltip
> telling what the minibuffer/echo area or fringe are for.

But I already gave an example (a typical one, AFAICS) which clearly
shows that the tooltip popped by IE says what the click on that place
_does_, not what that place _is_.  It's true that, for a button, the
difference is minor, but still...

Perhaps you should re-read the example I gave.  Here's the most
important part of that text again:

  Click this to delete all cookies from your machine.

This says what the click does, not what the place where you click is.

Suppose clicking on the left fringe would say something like

  A mouse-1 click on this area, called ``the fringe'', sets a
  breakpoint on the nearest source line shown.

Isn't this the same as what IE says above?

Now compare with what Emacs _really_ displays for that fringe click:

  <left-fringe> <mouse-1> (translated from <down-mouse-1> <mouse-1>)
  runs the command gdb-mouse-set-clear-breakpoint

  Set/clear breakpoint in left fringe/margin with mouse click.

Isn't this similar in spirit?

Now, I agree that what we say sounds not very clear (to say the least)
to a newbie, but I think we do mean to target newbies as well, and
that therefore we should work on making the doc string more
newbie-friendly.  But I'm repeating myself...