From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Stefan_Reich=F6r?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Improved help from minibuffer prompts Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:48:12 +0200 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1081854422 16028 80.91.224.253 (13 Apr 2004 11:07:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:07:02 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Tue Apr 13 13:06:55 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BDLkl-0002bY-00 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:06:55 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BDLkk-00075i-00 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:06:55 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1BDLcy-000182-GE for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 06:58:52 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.30) id 1BDLUd-0007no-3v for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 06:50:15 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.30) id 1BDLTE-0006xE-2V for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 06:49:20 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.78.161.123] (helo=proxy.riic.at) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (TLSv1:DES-CBC3-SHA:168) (Exim 4.30) id 1BDLSj-0006by-6G for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 06:48:17 -0400 Original-Received: from nanni.riic.uni-linz.ac.at.riic.at (nanni.riic.uni-linz.ac.at [140.78.161.79]) by proxy.riic.at (8.12.7/8.12.7/SuSE Linux 0.6) with ESMTP id i3DAmC8a021293 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:48:12 +0200 Original-To: emacs-devel In-Reply-To: (Miles Bader's message of "13 Apr 2004 15:57:58 +0900") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110002 (No Gnus v0.2) Emacs/21.3.50 (berkeley-unix) X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS - amavis-milter (http://www.amavis.org/) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:21558 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:21558 Hi Miles! > Stefan Reich=F6r writes: >> Now you can hit f1 when a minibuffer prompt is displayed and you get >> the function's docstring. > > It's kind of a neat idea, but F1 doesn't seem like a great > key-binding to me... Yes, I am not sure about that also. But the f1 and the C-h bindings point to the same keymaps AFAIK. I think it is important to make the help easy accessible. E.g.: M-x find-dired gives: Run find in directory: ~/ Hitting f1 (with my patch) gives: Help for find-dired: Run `find' and go into Dired mode on a buffer of the output. The command run (after changing into DIR) is =20=20 find . \( ARGS \) -ls =20=20 except that the variable `find-ls-option' specifies what to use as the final argument. > How about having the completion-help display code[*] do it: > when showing completions, if there's only a single unique completion, > show instead the help buffer. > > That way, you could either hit `?' after typing the command, or e.g. hit > TAB a few times -- once to complete the command, and another time to > display help. > I don't think, one can use '?' for the example above. Or do I miss something here? > [*] Probably not the generic completion-help code, but some specialized > version used when completing functions/commands -- though perhaps > the option of doing something special for completion-help-with-only- > one-completion could be made a general feature for users of completio= n. > > F1 currently does normal help without a prompt in the minibuffer, which > is a bit awkward; maybe it should just do the same thing as `?' in the > minibuffer -- which combined with the above technique, would actually > make it work the same as your suggestion... :-] It would be nice to have a functionality like the one I suggested to be built into emacs. Stefan.