Subject: Re: bug#12840: 24.2.50; ediff: mode-line of control buffer - improvement request

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 02:02:56 +0200

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

> I wouldn't mind making that bit bold, but it is somewhat unusual for
> modes to do that.  On the other and, there isn't really a lot of other
> info in that mode line, so it wouldn't be distracting, either:
> [screenshot]

I can only speak for me.  When looking at the mode line I want to see
the diff numbers in nearly all cases, and I don't want distractions when
using Ediff, so I made them outstanding (red).

> > 2. What's the "Quick Help" part for?  I don't see any use for it.  It
> > seems to be always present, but it doesn't indicate anything, and I
> > cannot click on it.  Also, if I didn't hit ? in the control buffer, the
> > only content of this buffer already is "Type ? for help".
>
> The "Quick Help" bit has a popup that says what mouse-2 and mouse-3
> does, which seems somewhat helpful.

But that's the same mouse tooltip as the rest of the mode-line of the
control buffer has.

Those mouse bindings are not "Quick Help" nor Ediff specific, they are
the very basic bindings from mouse.el:

(global-set-key [mode-line mouse-1] #'mouse-select-window)
(global-set-key [mode-line mouse-2] #'mouse-delete-other-windows)
(global-set-key [mode-line mouse-3] #'mouse-delete-window)

No problem about the tooltip - but that doesn't explain why "Quick Help"
is displayed.

The "quick help" is what you get when you hit `?`.  Look: Without the

  (setq ediff-window-setup-function 'ediff-setup-windows-plain)

setting, the control frame doesn't display a mode-line, but after
hitting `?` it does, and the "Quick Help" info gets visible.  My
interpretation is that 'ediff-setup-windows-plain has been added later,
after quick help, and the "Quick Help" string was never intended to be
visible all the time.  Plausible?

Michael.