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RE: tooltips for minor modes


From: Drew Adams
Subject: RE: tooltips for minor modes
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:10:52 -0800

>     One possibility would be to use the first line of the 
>     doc-string. But a quick "grep --after=1 define-minor-mode"
>     shows that for quite a lot of minor modes the first line
>     of the doc-string gives not useful information:
> 
> I am not surprised that the first line doesn't do it.
> But we could make the second line do it.
> 
> We might want to establish the convention that the second line
> of a minor mode's doc string starts with the start of a 
> sentence that explains
> briefly what the mode does.
> 
> Then the tooltip  could show the sentence which starts at that point.

That sounds a bit artificial to me. The doc string needs also to be readable
on its own.  I'm not sure it's good to press doc-string parts into doing
double duty.

I would opt for a :help keyword or just forget about the tooltip.

After all, now that we have a mouse-1 menu with a Help item that displays
the whole doc string, there is a little less need for a tooltip. 

Yes, a tooltip would still be good, so that simply hovering over the lighter
would give some info. But I'm not sure it's worth adding a new doc-string
convention and counting on people to follow it.





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