Re: finding the face of a popup

[Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@nyu.edu>]

At Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:29:08 +0200 Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE> wrote:

> Am 29.08.2007 um 18:30 schrieb Allan Gottlieb:
>
>> But you knew that the name of the face was tooltip; that is
>> exactly the information I didn't know (actually, forgot).
>
> The term ``tooltip´´ is in common use and it is not only GNU Emacs
> that uses them. Apple had before Mac OS X the balloon help, M$ is
> using screen tips. It is also obvious that a pop-up menu needs an
> action to happen before it can pop up, while the tooltip appears when
> the cursor comes close to some "magical" area.
>
> When you don't know what a tooltip is, then a *Help* window with
> character properties, including those of the tooltip, won't help you
> either. It could give a hint, at least ...
>
> I haven't read the tutorial for 25 years or so – could you check it
> and send a bug report (from Help menu), asking for an enhancement to
> describe tooltips? The Frames section of the Emacs info node has the
> tooltips:

I had sent another msg after the one you replied to (our msgs crossed
in the mail) so I think we are in agreement.  Below is an excerpt from
that later msg.

allan

Case 1. *Every* time emacs pops up something in this manner, the popup
has face `tooltip'.

Soln 1. Ensure that users know this.  It is doubtless in the manual,
but might be hard to find if you didn't know it was a tooltip.
I agree that I should have known since `tooltip' is hardly a term that
emacs invented.

Case 2. Popups occur for several reasons, some with different faces
than others.

Soln 2. Something along the lines I mentioned above that you quoted.
That is, if there is a source/cause/trigger of the popup, then face of
the popup could be mentioned when one asks for the face of the
trigger.  The quote of mine you gave was in response to eli's request
for a possible UI.