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Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-dat
From: |
Eli Zaretskii |
Subject: |
Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) |
Date: |
Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:26:54 +0300 (IDT) |
On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Terje Bless wrote:
> 2. The expected meaning of buttons is "wrong" here; button2 is Select
> and not Paste as it is everywhere else. Button1 does nothing, but
> everywhere else it means Select. Button3 gives you unrelated options.
> This is possibly the most confusing combination of behaviour for
> mouse buttons that can be chosen in the context. And it's absolutely
> unique to XEmacs.
That's true, Emacs traditionally has different conventions for mouse
buttons. The main problem (I think) is that mouse-1, the left button,
moves point to where you click, switching windows and buffers as
appropriate. I don't see an easy solution to that, except to ease the
burden a bit with tooltips and similar aids.
> 3. A dialog can be dismissed if you enter it by mistake. Just click
> Cancel or hit ESC. Here, ESC does nothing, there is no Cancel button,
You can dismiss the pop-up window as well, just with different gestures.
We could have a "Dismiss" button inside it to make it easier. I guess
the assumtion is that, since you typed TAB, you will proceed by selecting
one of the possible completions, after which the window pops down
automagically.
> Despite the dialogs, I tend to run my other editor entirely from the
> keyboard.
>
> In the Xemacs conmpletions buffer there is no hint of how to do this
Doesn't it say something like
In this buffer, type RET to select the completion near point.
?
> I'm sure you can switch from the minibuffer to the completions
> buffer from the keyboard, but I don't know how (see below). Trying the
> methods that are familiar from other environments -- and so have taken on
> the status of trained reflexes by now -- do not work.
Could you please tell what are those familiar methods?
> >I think you overestimate the price. The price of using the Emacs manual
> >as a reference, via the `i' command, is normally quite low. (The
> >abnormal cases usually constitute docs bugs.) I suggest to try that,
> >perhaps you will find it easier than you thought.
>
> Perhaps. What "i" command? "C-h i"?
No. Type "C-h i", then "m xemacs RET" (or "m emacs RET", as the case may
be), and _then_ type `i'. This invokes an Info command which asks for a
string and then looks up that string in the indices of the manual you are
looking at, in this case the XEmacs manual. A well-indexed manual should
have every important concept as well as all standard commands,
keystrokes, and variables in its indices. So `i' will quickly find what
you are looking for with a very high probability.
Let's conduct a little experiment, shall we? Give me a couple of
subjects that someone might wish to find quickly in the docs (perhaps
some problems that bothered you in the past), and I will post an
unabridged and uncensored description of how I looked for that. (I can
tell you in advance that my memory tends to forget many details, so you
don't have to account for the possibility that I will know exactly where
to look.)
> Oh great! These keybindings change depending on what buffer I'm in?
Of course they do.