Re: meta commands and Info manual

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> Hello,
>
> Alan Wehmann <alan.wehmann@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I am a new user of Org. I'm an experienced user of Emacs. My first use
>> of Org was to create a table. I soon found myself wanting to insert
>> a column. I looked at Info node "(org) Built-in table editor" [This
>> manual is for Org version 8.2.9.] and it said:
>>
>> ‘M-S-<right>     (org-table-insert-column)’
>>      Insert a new column to the left of the cursor position.
>>
>> I now know that this was somewhat mis-leading, since that key
>> combination is bound to "org-shiftmetaright", but at the time I was
>> rather confused (see topic "Org keymap question" in "news group"
>> gnu.emacs.help). I'd recommend a revision to the Info manual, to
>> describe more prominently command "org-shiftmetaright" and other
>> "meta" commands like it (apologies in advance if there is a later
>> version of the Info manual that addresses this).
>
> I think meta commands are the ones confusing here. I mean, is
>
>   M-S-<right>  (org-shiftmetaright)
>
> informative?
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure to understand what puzzled you in the first place.
>

I think what's puzzling is that these are not "normal" emacs keybindings
(and therefore not discoverable using the "normal" emacs mechanisms):
there is an extra level of indirection that org mode imposes which you
just have to know about. But I'm not sure what the best way to document
them would be: maybe a section explaining the mechanism plus links (or
footnotes) to go from e.g. the description of M-S-<right> in the table
section to the mechanism section. Or maybe showing the indirection
explicitly:

‘M-S-<right>     (org-shiftmetaright) --> (org-table-insert-column)’

Nick