On Apr 28, 2024, at 2:58 AM, Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> wrote

Of course a new wrapper macro could also be developed to ease this.
Do you anticipate any specific issues?

Here is what I recommend to do to simplify the definition of hints for users.

Like there can be a list of enter and exit commands in 'defvar-keymap':

:repeat ‘(:enter (commands ...) :exit (commands ...))’

the same list could be used for hints:

:repeat ‘(:enter (commands ...) :exit (commands ...) :hints ((command . hint) ...))’

This should be easier to document and to understand by users than
a special syntax of cons for binding and the requirement to add :name.

Though it will require repetition and thus be subject to changed-here-but-not-there errors, this does look good and nicely groups the information under :repeat. So this should work for all commands in the keymap:

(defvar-keymap expreg-repeat-map
:doc "Repeat map for `expreg' actions."
:repeat '(:hints ((expreg-expand . "expand") (expreg-contract . "contract")))

"\\" 'expreg-expand
"|" 'expreg-contract)

If a hint is missing for a command, it should just have its key mentioned. It looks like your idea would require changes to defvar-keymap. Do you want to propose a patch? We'd need some way to pass the hints in; perhaps the macro could set a property on the command symbol as you initially proposed.