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Re: Pressing ? does not allow window scrolling through the list of info


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: Pressing ? does not allow window scrolling through the list of info commands
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2023 22:06:40 +0300

> From: Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2023 01:28:29 +0700
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> On Fri, 7 Jul 2023 at 13:39, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > > However, what is the reason for that event loop?
> >
> > The reason is to allow return to the manual with minimal fuss.  As the
> > user who invokes "?" is very likely to be a newbie to Emacs, having
> > them to deal with buffers and windows at this point is unwise, to say
> > the least.
> 
> ‘help-mode-map’ has ‘q’ bound to ‘quit-window’ and that’s the minimal
> fuss way to return from the help window. It also would help build
> habits that work with a wide set of buffers in Emacs.

And how will we tell the user that 'q' quits?  In the echo-area,
perhaps?

> As it is, the user has to build three sets of habits: (1) for the
> rudimentary Info-summary modal event loop where SPC scrolls up and
> anything else quits; (2) for modes that inherit from special-mode
> where SPC scrolls up, DEL and S-SPC scroll down, ‘q’ quits, and all
> familiar keys work; and (3) for the full experience editable buffers
> where you have to scroll with Page Up/Down and have no notion of
> quitting.

You exaggerate the problem.  A typical user of computers these days
needs much more than 3 sets of habits for similar actions.  And
scrolling with SPC in Emacs is quite a widely-used paradigm.

> > I'm not saying I object to adding more keys to scroll the display
> > there, but the simplicity of going back to the manual should be
> > preserved.
> 
> (Hand-written whitespace-ignoring minimal diff follows. I signed the
> paperwork some time ago and it should be valid for now.)

Thanks, but this is not the right place for posting patches.



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