Re: Reducing mouse-dependency In Emacs.

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

Nick Roberts wrote:

   In the mouseless scenario, the help is displayed in the echo
   area. However, this doesn't happen when point is over a widget but
   when the user types <tab> (widget-forward) or <S-tab>
   (widget-backward). This is less distracting and fits well with
   earlier comments about emacspeak. Could you not do something
   similar with next-help-echo-region and previous-help-echo-region?

Nobody is going to be distracted without asking to be.  The
information would only show up either on explicit demand or through a
customizable option, where even some extra flexibility would be
provided, and that would not be enabled by default.

I believe that I will indeed make `next-help-echo-region' and
`previous-help-echo-region' automatically call `print-local-help',
since the user probably wants it, if he is calling those functions.  I
do not really believe this is a _substitute_ for call on demand,
however.  Moreover, some people may want the information shown
automatically, especially in the case of `keymap' and `local-map'
properties, which are both not that frequent and important to know
about.  I believe I am going to provide an option to show automatic
help only if one of those two properties are present, as well as
options to show all help automatically or no help automatically (the
default).

Sincerely,

Luc.