Subject: Re: bug#12396: 24.2.50; [PATCH] extend usability of gnus-read-ephemeral-emacs-bug-group

From: Stephen Berman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2012 21:49:05 +0200

On Sun, 09 Sep 2012 20:47:49 +0200 Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Stephen Berman <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> It would be more convenient if the bug number in the current line in
>> the Group buffer were offered as default regardless of where point is
>> in the line.
>
> It makes sense, but it's kinda not the way these function in Emacs
> usually work.  `M-x find-file-at-point', `M-x man', etc, all react to
> the thing under point.  And that's a very self-evident user interface.
> Put point at the thing you're interested in, and then issue a command.

I think there are significant differences between these three cases.
With ffap, the UI is already announced in the name, and any other
behavior would contradict it.  With man, the list of items naming man
pages is large and could always be augmented, i.e., pretty much any word
could be a potential target, so it makes sense to default to the word at
point.  But with g-r-e-e-b-g, even though bug numbers are in principle
unbounded, the context for identifying them can be narrowly specified,
as I tried to show; e.g., it won't grab a number in a subject line like
"Bug in forward-sexp starting with revision 340958".  In other words,
for g-r-e-e-b-g the typical use case will have a natural default (or
several, as I noted), which it therefore makes sense to use regardless
of where point is.  If this doesn't convince you, all I can add is that
I was annoyed enough times by having to navigate to the bug number to
avoid typing it in that I decided to code up a way to avoid having to do
that; having it in Emacs might spare others such annoyance. :-)

Steve Berman