Re: Hyperbole Feedback and Suggestions from a recent User

[Robert Weiner]

Hi Julian:

Thanks much for the detailed feedback.  It is very helpful and we would love to 
see more writeups like this.  It will take us awhile to respond to your points 
but we will as there are solutions to a number of them.

Regards,

-- rsw

> On Nov 6, 2024, at 8:41 AM, Julian Hoch <julianhoch@web.de> wrote:
> 
> 
>                          ____________________
> 
>                           HYPERBOLE FEEDBACK
> 
>                              Julian Hoch
>                          ____________________
> 
> 
>                            [2024-11-06 Wed]
> 
> 
> Table of Contents
> _________________
> 
> 1. Hyperbole Feedback email
> 2. System Info
> 3. What did you like and dislike about the system?
> .. 1. Like
> .. 2. Dislike
> 4. What kinds of tasks, if any, does it seem to help you with?
> 5. What did you think of the Emacs-based user interface?
> 6. How was the Hyperbole Manual and other documentation?
> 7. Was the setup trivial, average or hard?
> 8. What areas of Hyperbole would you like to see expanded/added?
> 9. How does it compare to other hypertext tools you have used?
> 10. Was it easy or difficult to create your own types?  Why?
> 11. Did you get any use out of the external system encapsulations?
> 12. Final words
> 
> 
> 1 Hyperbole Feedback email
> ==========================
> 
>  Hi, I am a fairly recent user of Emacs and Hypebole (started this
>  spring), and as suggested in the manual I wanted to give some feedback
>  on my experience so far.  I hope this is helpful for you.
> 
> 
> 2 System Info
> =============
> 
>   Editor       GNU Emacs 29.4 with native comp
>   Hyperbole    9.0.2pre
>   Sys Type     x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
>   OS Type      gnu/linux
>   Window Sys   x
>   News Reader  Gnus v5.13
>   Install      melpa, 20241019.621
> 
> 
> 3 What did you like and dislike about the system?
> =================================================
> 
> 3.1 Like
> ~~~~~~~~
> 
>  - *smart button (hkey-either)* - bound this to a spare key and use it
>     always!
>  - *custom buttons* - powerful feature. Set up a few new action types
>     for my own use cases, like links to external systems I am working
>     on.
>  - *HyWiki* seems powerful, but just getting into it
> 
> 
> 3.2 Dislike
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
>  - *architecture* kind of "old school" - not very modular, very
>     monolithic
>  - customization not obvious, documentation lacking examples in this
>    area
>  - sometimes not composable (e.g. koutliner major mode instead of minor
>    mode)
>  - for example also hard to integrate HyWiki with other systems
>    (e.g. denote, due to naming conventions)
> 
> 
> 4 What kinds of tasks, if any, does it seem to help you with?
> =============================================================
> 
>  - Quick navigation to internal and external links
>  - Triggering of actions inside and outside of emacs
> 
> 
> 5 What did you think of the Emacs-based user interface?
> =======================================================
> 
>  Generally good, but shows its age, compared to modern emacs packages.
>  In particular, the main "hyperbole" menu does not integrate well with
>  emacs.  You cannot easily call / bind actions from it - you cannot
>  even define macros.  It is very static and inflexible - unusual for
>  emacs packages.  It does not play well with other packages, like
>  which-key, vertico etc.
> 
> 
> 6 How was the Hyperbole Manual and other documentation?
> =======================================================
> 
>  The manual is generally excellent, but sometimes could need more
>  details and concrete examples.  The terminology around buttons is
>  confusing: The disticinction between implicit, explicit and global is
>  not clear for beginners.
> 
> 
> 7 Was the setup trivial, average or hard?
> =========================================
> 
>  Initial setup was trivial, but customizing and creating own action
>  types quite hard!  There are some examples online, but the manual does
>  not have too many.  I also have not figured out yet how to really
>  customize the behaviour of the smart buttons.
> 
> 
> 8 What areas of Hyperbole would you like to see expanded/added?
> ===============================================================
> 
>  - *HyWiki*: I think it does not need more features, but it needs get
>     better interoperability.
>  - Also, there should be less of a dependency on the *main menu* - all
>    functions should be accessible via interactive functions, so I can
>    bind them however I like.
>  - *Explicit buttons* - it is missing some quality of life features for
>     copying, moving, and creating explicit buttons.  Right now, it is
>     quite tricky to move an explicit button from one file to another (I
>     usually just recreate them).  Ideally you could copy them to the
>     kill ring and paste them in another file, not sure how feasible
>     that is.  Also, I would like to be able to create explicit buttons
>     with macros and scripts.
> 
> 
> 9 How does it compare to other hypertext tools you have used?
> =============================================================
> 
>  I am not sure what to compare it to honestly.  I see it less as a
>  competitor to other hypertext tools (like HTML or Wikis), and more as
>  a collection of tools to build my own system on top of other pieces
>  (like org-mode and denote, in my case).  I think that fits the emacs
>  philosophy well.
> 
> 
> 10 Was it easy or difficult to create your own types?  Why?
> ===========================================================
> 
>  Yes, quite. I needed to look at some examples I found online to
>  understand it. For example this one: [Teaching Emacs to recognize Jira
>  tickets and show them in a browser using Hyperbole implicit buttons -
>  beorg] I think this could be made easier with some helper functions or
>  at least examples on how to recognize custom expressions (in my case,
>  something like JIRA-1234).
> 
> 
> [Teaching Emacs to recognize Jira tickets and show them in a browser
> using Hyperbole implicit buttons - beorg]
> <https://www.beorgapp.com/blog/hyperbole-implicit-buttons/>
> 
> 
> 11 Did you get any use out of the external system encapsulations?
> =================================================================
> 
>  I assume you mean the ability to open links like weblinks, RFCs, etc.?
>  They are great but integration into other systems does not seem
>  easy. E.g. rfc1149 would open the plain text (in fundamental mode),
>  but what if I want to open it in rfc-mode?
> 
> 
> 12 Final words
> ==============
> 
>  Thanks for a great package!  Emacs would not be the same without it.
> 
>  Best regards, Julian Hoch
>