Re: Assignment of misc packages for emacs

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     > I wasn't aware of the HierarKey feature (it's a very well hidden 
> "fact").
>     > It compares almost 1:1 ... except I don't like HierarKey menus
>     > to show the full key bindings, e.g.
>     > 
>     >   Set face: default  (M-g d), bold  (M-g b), italic  (M-g i), l = 
> bold-italic  (M-g l), undeline  (M-g u), Other ...  (M-g o) 
> 
>     I tend to agre.  Maybe we should just change it.  Or move the M-g prefix
>     to the beginning of the line (so it appears only once).
> 
> What's right to do depends on the circumstances.  In the context of
> setting the face, you are typing key sequences.  The point is to show
> the whole equivalent key sequences for these commands.  For that
> point, it needs to show the whole key binding.

I don't understand why it _needs_ to show that.

I have just pressed M-g, and emacs responds with a menu which
tells me that pressing d gives default, b gives bold, etc.

So why is it necessary to tell me that the complete key binding is
M-g d, M-g b, etc.  ?   IMO, that's duplicate information, which
is more confusing than informative.

My suggestion is to remove the duplicate information and instead
emphasize which key to press like this:

 Set face: d)efault b)old i)talic bo(l)d-italic u)nderline O)ther ...

IMO this is simpler to read, and actually fits in 80 columns!

> Answering a question asked by a command is a different situation.  In
> that context there are no equivalent key bindings that are normally
> defined, so none should be shown.  If that doesn't work now, we would
> want to make it work that way.

But what if the effect is the same ?

Let's say I write a command (select-face) which prints exactly the
same prompt as is produced by M-g, reads a character, and selects
default, bold, italic, etc face depending on that character.  I then
bind that command to M-g.

So now there is no explicit key binding for `M-g b', but from a user's
point of view, entering M-g b still selects bold face in exactly the
same way as the current code does.

Why does it make sense to show the key binding " (M-g b)" in the
prompt in the first case and not in the second case -- when the
_effect_ is exactly the same in both cases.

IMO, the key binding should be removed from the prompt, as it
doesn't give any useful information, and it makes the prompt
approx. twice as long as it needs to be...!

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk