Re: Emacs Lisp's future

[Phillip Lord]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>>>> Instead of adding Magit as is, I would rather add certain components of
>>>> Magit to Emacs itself (after sufficiently abstracting them) and move
>>>> certain functionality into libraries that are already part of Emacs.
>>> That would be great.  There are some features of magit that would be
>>> really nice to have available for all packages by being bundled with
>>> emacs.  The popup menu system is pretty much the best, for example.
>> It is really nice. There is a similar solution in org-mode (the export
>> dispatcher) and even in auctex (which is simpler but generally works out
>> the right thing to do for you).
>
> FWIW, I don't use any of those things, so I don't really know what kind
> of "popup-menu" you're talking about.


It's not a menu at all, but a buffer. Saying in magit, I hit "b", then I
get a buffer "popping up" which looks like this....


Switches
 -t: Set upstream configuration (--track)         -m: Merged to HEAD (--merged)
 -M: Merged to master (--merged=master)           -n: Not merged to HEAD 
(--no-merged)
 -N: Not merged to master (--no-merged=master)
Args
 =c: Contains (--contains=)
 =m: Merged (--merged=)
 =n: Not merged (--no-merged=)

Actions
 v: Branch manager    b: Checkout          c: Create            r: Rename
 k: Delete


If I type "-t" (to set the -t option) then "--track" changes colour to
pink, so I know that I have selected it. When I finally hit "c", git
will be run to create a new branch with "--track" selected.


Org-mode works similarly; I hit C-cC-e (org-export-dispatch) and I get 


[C-b] Body only:    Off           [C-v] Visible only:     Off
[C-s] Export scope: Buffer        [C-f] Force publishing: Off
[C-a] Async export: Off


[c] Export to iCalendar
    [f] Current file              [a] All agenda files
    [c] Combine all agenda files  

[h] Export to HTML
    [H] As HTML buffer            [h] As HTML file
    [o] As HTML file and open     

[l] Export to LaTeX
    [L] As LaTeX buffer           [l] As LaTeX file
    [p] As PDF file               [o] As PDF file and open

[t] Export to Plain Text
    [A] As ASCII buffer           [a] As ASCII file
    [L] As Latin1 buffer          [l] As Latin1 file
    [U] As UTF-8 buffer           [u] As UTF-8 file

[P] Publish
    [f] Current file              [p] Current project
    [x] Choose project            [a] All projects


[&] Export stack                  [#] Insert template
[q] Exit


At the top we have options (although these don't equate to command line
options as with magit). All the keys like [c], [h] but not f or H are
highlighted. If I hit h, then the suboptions for Export to HTML light
up. 

So C-xCehh gives me "Export as HTML file", C-x-C-eho means and open in a
browser. I don't have to remember the options, because the menu guides
me through the process.

Auctex uses a normal complete on C-cC-c except that the default
"Compile" or "View" is almost always correct.

Phil