Re: cua-mode and the tutorial

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>]

Kim F. Storm wrote:
> The first instruction is to type C-v ... and it doesn't work
> as described!
>   
Do you mean that it does not work when cua-mode is enabled? Well, it is 
a problem. One solution would be to remove CUA mode from the tutorial 
buffer as you suggests. However I feel uncomfortable with that solution. 
It puts a burden on the user, "please learn this now, but later on you 
are going to use that".

A possible solution is perhaps to tell replace C-v in the tutorial with 
the actual key to use. However that requires rewriting the text since 
there are also sentences like "do it by holding down the CONTROL key 
while typing v". (And there are many languages to rewrite.) Maybe that 
sentence could be removed?

>
> However, in general, your changes have a big problem.
> The new informational (yellow) area may take so much
> space on the frame that the instructions:
>
>     >>  Now type C-v (View next screen) to move to the next screen.
> 	(go ahead, do it by holding down the CONTROL key while typing v).
> 	From now on, you should do this again whenever you finish
> 	reading the screen.
>
> is partially or even completely hidden, so the whole point of the
> tutorial is lost (you have to know how to scroll before you can
> learn how to scroll ...).
>   
That is a good point. However most users will still be able to scroll 
with the arrow keys and the mouse.


>
> It would be much better if you just placed a few yellow lines
> near the top with the following wording:
>
>  Some of the standard key bindings described in this tutorial
>  have been modified, so Emacs may behave differently from
>  what you learn here.  Click here for more details: [Details]
>   
Having less information there is maybe a solution, yes. And using help 
buffer for details. However I do believe that the tutorial should try to 
tell the actual key bindings that the user will use. Is not that much 
easier for those that use CUA mode for example?


> And then restore all key bindings (if possible) to their default
> inside the tutorial.
>   
This was my original thought, but now I think it is important to let 
users of CUA mode and Viper mode learn about basic key bindings 
differences. I think a lot of users will have CUA mode enabled.

>
> This way, you can also structure your code so there is:
> - one function which simply checks if any keys are changed
> - one function which setup the standard key bindings
> - one function to show the details (in a *Help* buffer).
>   
I have restructured the code in the version I sent in the last message. 
Sorry for the confusion.


I welcome ideas. It is not very easy to make this working well. I can 
see we have slightly different opinions about what the tutorial should 
do, teach actual bindings or default bindings or maybe both. I tried the 
last.