Re: Is Emacs becoming Word?

[Greg Novak]

* Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> wrote:
> But now I'm thinking that it might be even nicer to be able to get
> help on the last event, or sequence of events... 

I was thinking along the same lines and was just about to try to throw
together a proof-of-principle bit of code.  When something odd
happens, the user would use something like "M-x what-just-happened"
and get info about what Emacs thinks its doing, how to shut it off,
etc.

A perhaps simpler alternative would be to have new user-visible
functionality come enabled by default, but with verbose mini-buffer
entries, like "Type 'M-x describe-extended-character-sets' for more
information."  Fully enabling the new functionality would make the
mini-buffer entries go away.

As I see it, the advantages of the first approach ("M-x
what-just-happened") are:
1) As already pointed out, it's a facility for generic contextual help
2) It's unobtrusive unless the user asks for the information.

Disadvantages include:
1) Retrofitting existing code to actually provide good
context-sensitive information would seem to be a herculean task.
2) This will only help Emacs users who know that the
what-just-happened command exists.  That is, the situation which
prompted this discussion was that Emacs was translating certain inputs
into special characters and I didn't understand why.  If I didn't know
about the what-just-happened command, I would remain confused.

Advantages of the second (verbose minibuffer messages for tentatively
enabled functionality) approach include:
1) By design, the information only has to be added to new user-visible
functionality.  This seems much easier than trying to bring a fully
general contextual help system to fruition.
2) Presumably all Emacs users read messages in the minibuffer, so the
information about new user-visible changes will reach everyone as they
encounter it, rather than having to go digging for it in the NEWS
file, for example.  One could think of this as a dynamic way of
reading the NEWS file.

Disadvantages include:
1) This approach cannot be described as unobtrusive.  All Emacs users
would see an increased number of messages in the minibuffer, at least
until they decide to permanently enable the new functionality.  

I've only recently started digging through significant amounts of
elisp code, so I defer to the judgment of others concerning the
feasibility of either of these two ideas.

Greg