Re: Proposed new minor mode

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

David Kastrup wrote:

   Strange.  I think I read the contention several times that it would
   be a good idea to edit the buffer, making the text better match the
   appearance.

A contention is not a decision.  I was told that the only decision
remaining to be made on info was whether or not we would pursue Kim's
current attempts at refilling, with which there seem at present still
to be some problems.  (I do not know whether or not they are fixed or
about to be fixed by now.)  If I misunderstood this, then we could
reopen the discussion on this.

   The surprise is not ameliorated by the availability of a command
   toggling some visibility.  The novice user caught by surprise will not
   think "Oh, I should have called vis-mode-disable in order not get
   this".

Users who do not read manuals will get surprises.  Users who do read
manuals or tutorials deserve not to.  I plan to rewrite a part of the
tutorial.  Given the current implementation, I believe that I have to
make the user aware that the text described for the standalone version
is really there in the Emacs version too, just hidden, and that one
can get confronted with it.  (I do not intend to spend paragraphs on
this, but I believe it needs to be mentioned.)  It also has the
advantage that the Emacs user learning this would have encountered the
notion of a node name at this stage, just like the user using the
standalone version.  That notion is referred to later.  If we
implement buffer editing, I would tell the Emacs user about node names
in some other way.

On a separate matter, if you want to use this minor mode, you have to
call vis-mode.  vis-mode-disable is a technical internal function,
needed because functions in normal hooks can not accept arguments.

    > The user needs to be aware the text is there, because sooner or
    > later he is going to be confronted with it.

    And then he will get aware of it.

But clueless.

Sincerely,

Luc.