bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[Drew Adams]

Please remove such silly messages, which do not tell users about a *key
sequence* bound to the command they entered.

(Not to mention that you didn't even put "M-x deb-o RET" between `...'.)

This is not progress.  Noise, not help.  What were you thinking?

In GNU Emacs 25.0.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32)
 of 2014-10-20 on LEG570
Bzr revision: 118168 rgm@gnu.org-20141020195941-icp42t8ttcnud09g
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --enable-checking=yes,glyphs CPPFLAGS=-DGLYPH_DEBUG=1'

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> Please remove such silly messages, which do not tell users about a *key
> sequence* bound to the command they entered.

Actually I find these messages very instructive for people like me,
which had no idea about this (new with Emacs-25?) abbreviation ability!

> (Not to mention that you didn't even put "M-x deb-o RET" between `...'.)

`This could be an unmentioned improvement.' ;-)

> This is not progress.  Noise, not help.  What were you thinking?

In the contrary I appreciate such messages very much because they remind
me to become more efficient.

*But* above hint is not optimal!  It should have
been for example  `M-x d-o- <RET>' and not: M-x deb-o RET!
                       ^^^^^^^^^^

So bug#19152 is for real, since the hints are not yet conforming to key
binding conventions and might return an ambiguous and not optimal
(regarding to speed) key sequence.

Thank you for the key binding hints

        Dieter

-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Darmstadt, Germany

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de (H. Dieter Wilhelm) writes:

>> (Not to mention that you didn't even put "M-x deb-o RET" between `...'.)
>
> `This could be an unmentioned improvement.' ;-)
>
>> This is not progress.  Noise, not help.  What were you thinking?
>
> In the contrary I appreciate such messages very much because they remind
> me to become more efficient.
>
> *But* above hint is not optimal!  It should have
> been for example  `M-x d-o- <RET>' and not: M-x deb-o RET!
>                        ^^^^^^^^^^

Whether that's unique or not depends on what you have loaded.
`M-x deb-o' or `M-x d-o-' is not sufficient for me due to me loading
debbugs-gnu and stuff.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[Jay Belanger]

dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de (H. Dieter Wilhelm) writes:
> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:
>
>> Please remove such silly messages, which do not tell users about a *key
>> sequence* bound to the command they entered.
>
> Actually I find these messages very instructive for people like me,
> which had no idea about this (new with Emacs-25?) abbreviation ability!

Do you use the abbreviations a lot?

The full M-x commands have descriptive names and are always available; the
abbreviations given have neither of these qualities.  Like Drew, I find the
messages to be noise.

Jay

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de (H. Dieter Wilhelm) writes:
>
>>> (Not to mention that you didn't even put "M-x deb-o RET" between `...'.)
>>
>> `This could be an unmentioned improvement.' ;-)
>>
>>> This is not progress.  Noise, not help.  What were you thinking?
>>
>> In the contrary I appreciate such messages very much because they remind
>> me to become more efficient.
>>
>> *But* above hint is not optimal!  It should have
>> been for example  `M-x d-o- <RET>' and not: M-x deb-o RET!
>>                        ^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Whether that's unique or not depends on what you have loaded.
> `M-x deb-o' or `M-x d-o-' is not sufficient for me due to me loading
> debbugs-gnu and stuff.

Yes you are right! After debbugs-gnu.. one needs to type `M-x d-on-' as
a shortcut for debugs-on-entry to be unambiguous ;-)

  Dieter
-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Darmstadt, Germany

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Hi Jay,

Jay Belanger <jay.p.belanger@gmail.com> writes:

> dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de (H. Dieter Wilhelm) writes:
>> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:
>>
>>> Please remove such silly messages, which do not tell users about a *key
>>> sequence* bound to the command they entered.
>>
>> Actually I find these messages very instructive for people like me,
>> which had no idea about this (new with Emacs-25?) abbreviation ability!
>
> Do you use the abbreviations a lot?

I used them not yet so often but since I'm using more and more commands
without key-bindings (which is painful when you already know which
command you want) I'm going to use them for

- debug-on-entry (d-on-)
- debbugs-gnu-bugs (d-g-b)
- re-builder (re-b)
- eval-buffer (e-bu)
- log-edit-insert-changelog (l-e-i-c)

> The full M-x commands have descriptive names and are always available;
> the abbreviations given have neither of these qualities.

But the descriptive names remain available, it's just when you know what
you want you are empowered to type it faster, aren't you?  Hmm, I should
have reported that I'm using icomplete-mode, of course, this mode feels
so natural that I'm already took it for granted, sorry!  With (setq
icomplete-mode t) you can see both the full descriptive names and the
abbreviation.

Have a nice day

     Dieter

-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Darmstadt, Germany

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[Drew Adams]

> Actually I find these messages very instructive for people like me,
> which had no idea about this (new with Emacs-25?) abbreviation
> ability!

Then turn them for your own use.  And no, it is not new with
Emacs 25.  And even if there were some new completion matching
method, that is not a reason to bother users by drawing their
attention to it for their `M-x' use.  Let people learn normally.

You "had no idea about this".  Fine.  RTFM.  Read NEWS.  Explore
Emacs - there are a thousand ways to learn how to use it.

Some developer's new discovery (even of something that is not
new) might be a shiny new toy to that developer, but that is not
a reason to send up fireworks to advertise its existence.

> > This is not progress.  Noise, not help.  What were you thinking?
> 
> In the contrary I appreciate such messages very much because they
> remind me to become more efficient.

Again, for your own use, please.

> *But* above hint is not optimal!  It should have
> been for example  `M-x d-o- <RET>' and not: M-x deb-o RET!

Not necessarily.  Depends on the current values of
`completion-styles' and `completion-category-overrides'.

Does your messaging take those into account?  Are we going to
be analyzing possible completions for the current command now,
in order to give users a reasonable and context-sensitive such
"help" message?

The right thing is to drop this.  Let users learn about the
standard (and any nonstandard but possibly current) ways that
command names (and other names) can be abbreviated.

There will always be some users (typically newbies, but we are
all newbies for some parts of Emacs) who find such a message
helpful, because they haven't read the doc yet or otherwise
learned about this or that UI feature.

That's not a reason to turn this crap on by default.  Control
it by `novice.el', if you like, or add a user option (off by
default) `for novice-ui-help'.

> So bug#19152 is for real, since the hints are not yet conforming to
> key binding conventions and might return an ambiguous and not optimal
> (regarding to speed) key sequence.

One person's optimal is another person's bother.  There are
many ways to match a name.  Some might be more optimal for some
users in some contexts than others.  But there is nothing gained
by trying to find "the optimal" one ("regarding to speed" or any
other quality).  It is a matter of a user's key bindings, keyboard
layout, personal preferences, etc.

Not to mention that some (especially newbie?) users will take
such a message as an admonition that they are doing something
wrong, and that they should or must mend their ways to do
things the indicated "right way".

YAGNI.  This is not a good idea; sorry.

Please remove it, at at least as default behavior.  A reminder
that a command is bound to a key is a reasonable feature.  And
even for that we have a user option (`suggest-key-bindings').

If you want to add another user option for this noise, I have
no objection, as long as this behavior is off by default.

Just one opinion, of course.

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[Alan Mackenzie]

In article <mailman.14373.1416741437.1147.bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> you wrote:
> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> Please remove such silly messages, which do not tell users about a *key
>> sequence* bound to the command they entered.

+1

> Actually I find these messages very instructive for people like me,
> which had no idea about this (new with Emacs-25?) abbreviation ability!

Which is of questionable value and questionable safety.  Read the anecdote
in entry "DWIM" of the New Hacker's Dictionary (about somebody having his
command "delete *$" helpfully interpreted as "delete *") to see why.

This feature is even present in Emacs 24.3.  I'm now going to find out how
to turn it off, once and for all.

>        Dieter

> -- 
> Best wishes
> H. Dieter Wilhelm
> Darmstadt, Germany

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

bug#19152: 25.0.50; "You can run the command `debug-on-entry' with M-x deb-o RET"

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

[…]

 >> Actually I find these messages very instructive for people like me,
 >> which had no idea about this (new with Emacs-25?) abbreviation
 >> ability!

 > Which is of questionable value and questionable safety.  Read the
 > anecdote in entry "DWIM" of the New Hacker's Dictionary (about
 > somebody having his command "delete *$" helpfully interpreted as
 > "delete *") to see why.

	Do you have any specific scenario in mind where this
	‘-’-completion may be harmful?  I’m occasionally using it for I
	guess around a year or so and never had an issue.

 > This feature is even present in Emacs 24.3.  I'm now going to find
 > out how to turn it off, once and for all.

-- 
FSF associate member #7257  http://boycottsystemd.org/  … 3013 B6A0 230E 334A