Subject: Re: bug#15599: [PATCH] Inferior Lisp Mode Menu

From: John Anthony <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 01:56:06 +0100

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 10:48:11PM -0400, Glenn Morris wrote:
> 
> Thanks. Please send a reminder when you hear your copyright assignment
> is complete.

I'll be sure to contact you as soon as I hear back.

> > ["Eval Last Sexp" lisp-eval-last-sexp t]
> 
> Is it useful to have that appearing in the inferior lisp buffer's menu?
> Surely it's normally used with stuff in a Lisp Mode buffer?

This was my initial though as well, although I have used it in an
inferior lisp session as well - useful for checking the last sexp you
wrote will give the correct result whilst working on a larger
expression.

> > ["Load File" lisp-load-file t]
> 
> Should be "Load File..."
> Similarly for "Compile File...", and indeed for most of these menu items
> I think.

I think you're quite correct. Before deciding to work on them I, like
I think most Emacs users, always hid and never thought about the
menus. It's taken me a while to really grok the style and filter out
the inconsistent stuff from the good.

> > ["Show Fucntion Doc" lisp-show-function-documentation t]
>          ^^^^^^^^
> I think "Show Documentation for Function..." would be better.
> But again, isn't this a command more likely to be useful in a Lisp Mode
> buffer? IMO this applies to many of those menu items.
> But I never use inferior-lisp-mode, so I don't know.

I've taken to spell-checking whilst I work on menu entries as well.

There are lots of times I've looked at things and tried to decide if
it should be in the menu entry. etc/TODO says inferior-lisp should
have a menu entry but all of the functions seem to be better off in a
Lisp Mode buffer. I'll also resist the urge for brevity and just use a
proper sentence in future - I guess it makes sense to provide menu
users with an informative menu item as they are less likely to have
much experience. In future I'll append "..." to menu entries that
require further input in accordance with style rules.

The two entries you pointed out seem to be the most useful entries,
actually, as I could see myself wanting to look up documentation
(especially for the last-typed function) in an inferior-lisp.

As always, style and implementation feedback is extremely welcome. I'm
intending to do a lot of this and therefore early feedback will
prevent me from doing a lot of extra work fixing things I've done
wrong.

-- 
John Anthony