On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 1:53 AM John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com> wrote:

> >>>>> Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Basically, as soon as isearch starts, you should see something like this.
> > Toggles [M-s]: [w] Word OFF [_] Symbol OFF ['] Character-Fold ON [r]
> Regexp
> > OFF I-search: search string here
>
> Artur, does this mean the I-search prompt would be two-lines high in the
> minibuffer, instead of one-line? If so, I would definitely want a way to
> disable it; if I already know the options, it shortens the text window for
> documentation I wouldn't need.
>
> For new users, I'm not sure whether it should be on by default or not. It's
> handy, for sure, but distracting maybe? I can't say without that mindset.
> I'd
> love to hear from some users to see what they think.
>
> John
>
>
In the wake of magit, Mickey Petersen (who wrote Mastering Emacs) wrote a
package called discover.el (blog intro + screenshot):
https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/discoverel-discover-emacs-context-menus


This might be a good direction for the conversation.

I've been an emacs user for ~2 years now. I think some minimal
documentation / toggles in the magit spirit would go a long way in
demystifying the emacs behavior.

As noted by someone else, I would consider it critical to indicate somehow
that there are other modifiers and options.

I would, of course, want a toggle for this.

Some of the things that have made my life as a newbie better were:
- discovering which function I just triggered with my keypress
- discovering which keypress I can use for the function I just called
- discovering how I can modify the default behavior of an emacs function

Any way in which emacs can help with these things is good for a beginner,
to help them map emacs behavior with emacs terminology.