Re: Request to distribute Casual packages on NonGNU ELPA

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

Charles Choi <kickingvegas@gmail.com> writes:

> Greetings Emacs Devel -
>
> Over the course of this past year, I have published a number of Emacs
> packages that offer Transient-based user interfaces for different
> modes with the moniker of "Casual" on MELPA. I wish to pursue
> publishing them on NonGNU ELPA and seek guidance on how to move
> forward with this. I have read the README at
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/nongnu.git/plain/README.org
> and believe that these packages all comply with the guidance for
> package acceptance into NonGNU ELPA.
>
> A current listing of the packages that I wish to distribute on NonGNU
> ELPA can be found at the link
> https://melpa.org/#/?q=kickingvegas%20casual

I have given the `casual-bookmarks` command a spin, and I have looked at
a few others.  The screenshots really helped here.  Please find below my
review of Casual, and some ideas for potential improvements.  I hope you
find it useful.

AFAICT, Casual essentially provides something similar to
`which-key-show-full-mode` but with a hand-crafted display based on
transient instead of the auto-generated display which-key has.  Another
comparison is `help-quick-toggle`, though connected to the current major
mode.  It could also be compared to the many various `hydra` recipes
floating around out there.

I quite like it to the extent that it does the above, FWIW.  But there
are also some things that I think could be improved.

- Why so many packages?  They could easily be bundled into just one
  package.  This is also strongly suggested by the fact that there is a
  need for a `consult-bundle` package.  There is little to no benefit to
  split it up, it just makes dealing with it more fiddly.

- The Casual suite would benefit from having an Info manual.  This is
  related to the above point; there is a lot of duplicated information
  in the various README files.

- `casual-dired` changes some of the default Dired keybindings.  I think
  this is confusing, and reduces the value of `casual-dired` as a
  learning and/or help tool.  It should be possible to use the transient
  menu for Dired without being forced to use the new keybindings.

  This suggests to me that there should be a completely separate mode,
  perhaps not even part of Casual, to enable the "new and improved"
  keybindings everywhere: in Dired, in the Casual transient menu, etc.
  This would broaden its applicability to more use cases; for example, I
  might want to use the transient menu, but I have little to no interest
  in non-default Dired keybindings.

- I would put Casual on GNU ELPA, if possible.

I also have some comments based on the README.md for `casual-bookmarks`:

> Casual Bookmarks is an opinionated Transient-based user interface for
> Emacs Bookmarks.
>
> INSTALLATION (require 'casual-bookmarks) ;; optional

Using `require` is redundant, and not best practice: it slows down
starting Emacs and requires more memory, even if the commands are never
used.  All useful entry-points should simply be autoloaded (this is done
automatically by package.el on install).

> (keymap-set bookmark-bmenu-mode-map "C-o" #'casual-bookmarks-tmenu)
>
> Alternately with `use-package': (use-package bookmark
>   :ensure nil :defer t)

AFAICT, this form does nothing and can be removed.

> (use-package casual-bookmarks
>   :ensure t :bind (:map bookmark-bmenu-mode-map
>               ("C-o" . casual-bookmarks-tmenu) ("S"
>               . casual-bookmarks-sortby-tmenu) ("J" . bookmark-jump))
>   :after (bookmark))

The `bookmark-jump` key binding is generally useful, and should
preferably be sent as a patch to Emacs itself.

Perhaps this also applies to the new key bindings for info, ibuffer, and
org-agenda, etc.  I don't know, and I didn't look into it.

> Casual Bookmarks requires Casual Lib which in turn requires a recent
> installation of Transient 0.6.0+ from either ELPA or MELPA. As an
> older version of Transient is built-in to the Emacs release,

This should say which version of Emacs needs to have transient upgraded.
If it is Emacs 29.4, then say that.