Re: [PATCH] info - easier navigation with arrow keys

[Benno Schulenberg]

Ben Asselstine wrote:
> When people browse the web in textual form, links, lynx, etc are
> often used.  Yes the keybindings happen to be similar to lynx,
> but more importantly it is an intuitive way to read linked
> documents for people who haven't used `info' before.

But people who haven't used 'info' before will not know that Info 
documents contain hyperlinks, nor will they care.  They will mostly 
just want quickly leaf through the document equentially, trusting 
that it has been arranged in a sensible order.

Instead of making the arrow keys behave strangely, a more powerful 
way of making first users realize that they are looking at a text 
with hyperlinks is: to colour those links bright blue, and to 
underline the one that has been selected with Tab.

> > In most browsers Arrow Up and Down simply scroll.
>
> In the case of firefox you're right

The arrow keys scroll in webbrowsers, in PDF viewers, in 'less', ...  
They also should in 'info'.  And they should scroll in the way 
of 'less', in the way of --vi-keys, and not move the cursor.

> -- but obviously users are equipped with a mouse.

Hmm, I'm probably an atypical user: my mouse does not have a wheel, 
so I almost always use the arrow keys and PageUp/PageDown to scroll 
around in a browser.

> In this implementation I think it is 
> useful that up and down arrows visit nodes in the info file
> because new users don't even know that a link starts with a `*'.

So make the links obvious by giving them the default weblink colour.  
And the default keys in webbrowsers for jumping from link to link 
are not the arrow keys, but Tab and Shift-Tab, so 'info' is half 
good there already.  (How to bind ESC-[-Z to move-to-prev-xref?)

> > Arrow Left and
> > Right scroll sideways, but as this doesn't make sense in
> > 'info', those keys could instead be made synonyms of [ and ]:
> > previous and next node.
>
> I really think new users have a browser mentality and expect the
> left arrow to go back to the page they were just reading.

If people really come to 'info' with a browser mindset, they would 
expect Alt-Left to go to the last visited node, and Alt-Right to 
move forward in history.  Plain Left and Right they would expect to 
scroll horizontally, if anything.

> > To me the most useful default key binding would be somewhat
> > like --vi-keys with the addition of cursor-movement-scrolls=On
> > and the above mapping of Arrow Left and Right.
>
> I think my patch is much more intuitive than what you suggest. 

I'll bet you a bottle of Pomerol that you are mistaken.  :)

> Also, the --vi-keys option doesn't make `info' behave like any
> version of vi that I've used.

True, the --vi-keys option is not very good.  The aspect that I had 
in mind was that of Arrow Up and Down scrolling immediately instead 
of moving the cursor.

> > Anyway, when implementing a different (default) key binding
> > scheme, please make it configurable via a
> > command-line/config-file option, so it will be easy to switch
> > back to the traditional beviour.
>
> I think something needs to be done about making `info' easier to
> use, and this is what I have come up with.  I really think `info'
> could benefit from having more users!  I agree that a
> command-line option to go back to the traditional behaviour would
> be useful.
>
> I would urge you to try it out. :)

I did.  That's why I said some people would go mad if this were to 
become the default.  Me the first.

But I must admit that this was with cursor-movement-scrolls=On, 
which makes for a crazy mix of jumping from link to link and 
scrolling to the next node.  When turning that variable off, it's a 
little better, but still the biggest hurdle for new users remains: 
how do I go to the next page, how do I sequentially flip or scroll 
through the entire document, from start to finish, and then back?

> Apply the patch and then sit 
> somebody down who doesn't know Info, or doesn't use it because
> it's too darned difficult.  This patch makes the experience
> better without throwing anything away (all of the other keys
> still do the same thing).

It throws away what Sergey made a few months ago: the ability to 
scroll through a document by using only the Arrow Down key, and in 
such a way that you get to see the entire text, not just the top of 
each node.

Instead of changing the behaviour of the arrow keys, 'info' can be 
made more usable for new users quite easily:

* Bind PageUp and PageDown by default to scroll-backward and 
scroll-forward, instead of to scroll-backward-page-only and 
scroll-forward-page-only.
* Set scroll-step=1 and cursor-movement-scrolls=On by default.
* Use ? to search backward.
* Use h to show the help window (and H for the tutorial).
* A second h should close the help window again.
* The help text should show q as the key for quitting 'info', 
instead of the bewildering C-x C-c.
* The first keys to be shown under "Selecting other nodes" should 
be ] and [, not n and p.
* And after those two it should mention Tab and Enter -- and it 
should use those names, instead of TAB and RET.

And so on.

Benno