RE: add a mode-line menu to menu-bar?

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > FYI - tooltips do provide some help on mode-line mouse actions,
> > as does `C-h a mode-line'.
> >
> > There are also other reasons to add such a menu, including
> > keyboard access via tmm. However, RMS has already decided against this.
> >
>
> How about adding M-x describe-mode-line and "Describe Mode
> Line..." under the "Help" menu?
> Like this: <snip>

I don't want to belabor this, as a decision was already made, but the idea
behind a menu-bar menu for Mode Line was to provide a different means of
access to the mode-line commands, in addition to providing help about them
(a learning aid). The analogy made was the Minibuf menu-bar menu, for
minibuffer actions.

Wrt your suggestion about the Help menu - I find it less helpful than
tooltips, personally. The mode line can be configured differently by
different users and in different buffers. Tooltips generally provide help
that is (mostly) appropriate for the current mode-line configuration. A help
description for the mode-line would be general and verbose, unless it too
were a dynamic function (e.g. a collection of current tooltip info). I can't
tell from your message just what kind of help you suggest (dynamic and
context-sensitive, or static and general).

A Help menu item for the mode line might not be a bad idea, but it should
just go to the appropriate Info node, IMO. That node should detail the most
common mode-line constructs and mouse clicks. If we added such a Help menu
item, it might be good to put it in a submenu that also provided help about
other UI components - IOW, provide (Info) help on all UI components in one
place. These components would include, for example, components described
below Info nodes Screen and User Input.