Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date)

[Eli Zaretskii]

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.