Re: A different way to interactively pass options to commands

[Óscar Fuentes]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> So, could Emacs take advantage of something like this? I think so.
>
> IIUC Magit uses the `transient` package for that functionality, right?

The popup functionality was segregated to its own package, yes.

> I do think it gives a very nice user experience for some things.

Yes, for some. For other things it is not the right thing.

It shines for configuring actions. If you have one action that works
depending on multiple options, this UI is great. But if you have many
actions, it is of no use. The later conforms more to Emacs' M-x, menu
and shortcut-based UI.

> The most obvious case that comes to my mind is those of major modes that
> have several of `C-c C-<foo> C-<bar>` bindings (e.g. to insert code
> templates or other such things) which I never even try to use because
> I find those key bindings just much too long to remember.

Org suffers from that kind of key binding proliferation, but IIRC most
of them are different actions, although conceptually related (commands
that operate on tags, for instance.) For now I solve those cases with
M-x, ido and the flx algorithm.