Re: discoverability, better defaults and which-key in Emacs

[Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev>]

On 05/02/2024 21:33, Justin Burkett wrote:
>> If you like which-key's UI (and I don't mind it, aside from the timer
>> thing -- seems like it can be more useful than the current
>> 'describe-bindings' in many cases), then we could ask the author for
>> this different mode of operation, where the timer only tells the user
>> how to get this transient menu with hints (pressing C-h), but the menu
>> itself isn't shown.
>>
>> Or more generally we'll have such a timer globally, and the message
>> ("use C-h") would be independent from which-key. But which-key can plug
>> into the "C-h" binding one way or another, to replace describe-bindings
>> if the user configured it this way.
> I'm the author of which-key, and I've been following along but don't
> have a strong opinion on whether it should be on by default, so I'll
> let you all decide.
> 
> I should mention in response to the comments above that this feature
> is partially implemented through the following setup (from the
> README). It simply sets a long delay for the timer and allows you to
> use C-h to trigger the popup.
> 
>       ;; Allow C-h to trigger which-key before it is done automatically
>       (setq which-key-show-early-on-C-h t)
>       ;; make sure which-key doesn't show normally but refreshes
> quickly after it is
>       ;; triggered.
>       (setq which-key-idle-delay 10000)
>       (setq which-key-idle-secondary-delay 0.05)
>       (which-key-mode)

Nice, thanks. These settings are for the second option, right? "More 
generally ...", etc.

What is missing is the note in the echo area that tells the user to 
press C-h after a timeout (like 200ms or so) if they want help in the 
middle of typing a key sequence.