Re: discoverability, better defaults and which-key in Emacs

[Justin Burkett]

On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 6:05 PM Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev> wrote:
>
> On 05/02/2024 21:33, Justin Burkett wrote:
> >> If you like which-key's UI (and I don't mind it, aside from the timer
> >> thing -- seems like it can be more useful than the current
> >> 'describe-bindings' in many cases), then we could ask the author for
> >> this different mode of operation, where the timer only tells the user
> >> how to get this transient menu with hints (pressing C-h), but the menu
> >> itself isn't shown.
> >>
> >> Or more generally we'll have such a timer globally, and the message
> >> ("use C-h") would be independent from which-key. But which-key can plug
> >> into the "C-h" binding one way or another, to replace describe-bindings
> >> if the user configured it this way.
> > I'm the author of which-key, and I've been following along but don't
> > have a strong opinion on whether it should be on by default, so I'll
> > let you all decide.
> >
> > I should mention in response to the comments above that this feature
> > is partially implemented through the following setup (from the
> > README). It simply sets a long delay for the timer and allows you to
> > use C-h to trigger the popup.
> >
> >       ;; Allow C-h to trigger which-key before it is done automatically
> >       (setq which-key-show-early-on-C-h t)
> >       ;; make sure which-key doesn't show normally but refreshes
> > quickly after it is
> >       ;; triggered.
> >       (setq which-key-idle-delay 10000)
> >       (setq which-key-idle-secondary-delay 0.05)
> >       (which-key-mode)
>
> Nice, thanks. These settings are for the second option, right? "More
> generally ...", etc.
>
> What is missing is the note in the echo area that tells the user to
> press C-h after a timeout (like 200ms or so) if they want help in the
> middle of typing a key sequence.

True, but I think a message like that could be useful regardless of
whether which-key is active (i.e., for `describe-prefix-bindings`).