Re: describe-bindings: ^L, bad order, naming

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:33:06 +0000
> 
> > We could use overlays to display the ^L as something more visually
> > appealing, while leaving ^L in the buffer.
> 
> Sounds like a complicated solution to me.

It isn't complicated.

> But if that's the only way...

I don't know if that's the only way, that's the first way I could
think of.  Others might have other, perhaps better, ideas.

> > We could modify the help echo string to mention "shortcuts".  I don't
> > think the name of the menu item itself should change, since this is
> > Emacs terminology, and newbies need to learn it as fast as possible.
> 
> Unless newbies are successful at finding what they want (help on  
> functions assigned to keys), there is no learning effect. They will  
> just skip over "Key Bindings" if they don't know what a binding is.
> 
> And sorry, the echo area is not enough.
> 
> 1. It is not displayed on my system when going through the menus.

Did you turn the tooltips off?  If not, perhaps there's some bug?

> 2. the echo area is far away from the menus (visually), and I  
> wouldn't be used to check it anyways when going through menus. Menu  
> strings have to be self explanatory.

First, the default is to display the help text in a tooltip, not in
the echo area.

Second, the area near the bottom of the display is where other GUI
applications display longer descriptions of the menu items.  So I
think users do know to look there' even if tooltips are somehow
disabled.

> I think a useful compromise would be "Keyboard Commands". I don't  
> think that this is inconsistent with Emacs terminology.

IMHO, it _is_ inconsistent.  And in addition, it is not mentioned
anywhere in the docs where a newbie might look for basic terminology.
It's not in Glossary, for example.

> > Could you please drop this signature stuff?  It's very long and thus
> > annoying.  TIA.
> 
> It's an attachment and shouldn't be displayed on your screen.
> Most mail readers will display "signed".

Rmail does display it.

I don't mind short signatures, but this one is annoyingly long.