Karl Berry wrote: > [About skipping to the previous hyperlink.] > > My thought was, how often does a reader think backwards? My > belief is, not very often.
You are probably right. The usage I had in mind, though, was: Tab-Tab-Tab..., oops, too far, how do I go back? > Same deal for search-backward. However, I agree it shouldn't be > in the initial list of basic commands as an M-x. But instead of > binding it, I'm tempted to just remove it. Again, how often does > a reader want to search backward? Fair enough. Removal is okay. It would be nice, though, to have instead search-next and search-previous bound to a single key by default. In my .infokey file I have the following: . search-next , search-previous These keys were chosen because comma and period sit under the "<" and ">" signs on a US keyboard. Those keys are already taken by first-node and last-node, so "," and "." seemed a good second choice. Of course this steals the comma key from next-index-match, but I doubt that relatively new users will want to use that function -- I still don't understand what exactly it does. In the description of the search command, I think the addition of "and select the node in which the next occurrence is found" is superfluous. Before going to a next node, the user will probably want to read through the entire current node. So in the help text the scrolling commands should be mentioned before the node-jumping commands. In the group of scrolling commands, Home and End should be mentioned last, as they take the biggest steps. The commands that move the cursor a single line are currently listed in the following way: ESC ESC [ B Scroll forward one line. ESC ESC [ A Scroll backward one line. Instead of the longest available key binding, it should mention the shortest: Down and Up. And "scroll" is not the right description for what these keys do. The following seems better: Down Move down one line. Up Move up one line. In the rest of the help text, the next-line and previous-line commands are mentioned multiple times: C-n (next-line) Move down to the next line C-p (prev-line) Move up to the previous line ESC Up (prev-line) Move up to the previous line ESC Down (next-line) Move down to the next line ESC ESC [ A (prev-line) Move up to the previous line ESC ESC [ B (next-line) Move down to the next line Up (prev-line) Move up to the previous line Down (next-line) Move down to the next line ESC [ A (prev-line) Move up to the previous line ESC [ B (next-line) Move down to the next line I don't see the point of this: it makes the list of commands seem much longer than it actually is. For the user the shortest key binding will be enough. In this case just Up, Down, C-n and C-p. If a single key or key combo is available, there is no need to mention two-key sequences, and if a two-key sequence is available, there's no need to mention three-key ones. The keys for scrolling a screenful should mention either Space and Backspace, or PageDown and PageUp. Listing the keys for scroll-forward-page-only and scroll-backward-page-only is not needed: it is easy enough to scroll back when scrolling beyond a node boundary. So the group of scrolling command would look better something like this: Down Move down one line. Up Move up one line. SPC Scroll forward one screenful. DEL Scroll backward one screenful. End Go to the end of this node. Home Go to the beginning of this node. > Also, when scrolling down through the help text, it should > stop at the bottom, fully stop -- and not beep, say "No more > nodes within this document", and go back to the top. > > I agree, but this has to be postponed (unless someone else cares > to send me a patch within a couple days). Can you put it in the > bug list? You mean file a bug on Savannah? > All other changes agreed and committed. The row of stars under the title line is still there. In case you want to keep it, it needs to be a bit shorter. Benno
