Re: Pressing ? does not allow window scrolling through the list of info commands

[Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>]

On Fri, 07 Jul 2023 19:11:01 +0000 uzibalqa <uzibalqa@proton.me> wrote:

> ------- Original Message -------
> On Saturday, July 8th, 2023 at 7:06 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>
>> > From: Yuri Khan yuri.v.khan@gmail.com
>> > Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2023 01:28:29 +0700
>> > Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
>> > 
>> > On Fri, 7 Jul 2023 at 13:39, Eli Zaretskii eliz@gnu.org wrote:
>> > 
>> > > > However, what is the reason for that event loop?
>> > > 
>> > > The reason is to allow return to the manual with minimal fuss. As the
>> > > user who invokes "?" is very likely to be a newbie to Emacs, having
>> > > them to deal with buffers and windows at this point is unwise, to say
>> > > the least.
>> > 
>> > ‘help-mode-map’ has ‘q’ bound to ‘quit-window’ and that’s the minimal
>> > fuss way to return from the help window. It also would help build
>> > habits that work with a wide set of buffers in Emacs.
>> 
>> 
>> And how will we tell the user that 'q' quits? In the echo-area,
>> perhaps?
>> 
>> > As it is, the user has to build three sets of habits: (1) for the
>> > rudimentary Info-summary modal event loop where SPC scrolls up and
>> > anything else quits; (2) for modes that inherit from special-mode
>> > where SPC scrolls up, DEL and S-SPC scroll down, ‘q’ quits, and all
>> > familiar keys work; and (3) for the full experience editable buffers
>> > where you have to scroll with Page Up/Down and have no notion of
>> > quitting.
>> 
>> 
>> You exaggerate the problem. A typical user of computers these days
>> needs much more than 3 sets of habits for similar actions. And
>> scrolling with SPC in Emacs is quite a widely-used paradigm.
>
> How does one scroll up again, it is not evident how.

At the risk of making another least useful response, note that typing
`C-h m' in info-mode displays the normal *Help* buffer (buried by `q'
and scrollable with keyboard and mouse) containing the exact content of
the special modal *Help* buffer displayed by typing `?' in info-mode.
Of course, the *Help* buffer displayed by `C-h m' (describe-mode) also
contains information about the minor modes active in the info-mode
buffer, so it's not as streamlined as the buffer displayed by `?', but
it is navigable in the usual ways.

Steve Berman