Subject: bug#23341: x-show-tip does not respect the value of tooltip-hide-delay, and the default tooltip timeout isn't configurable

From: martin rudalics <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 19:08:43 +0200

>> A function that calls ‘x-show-tip’ directly should generally use
 >> ‘tooltip-hide-delay’ as TIMEOUT argument.  If it doesn't, it should
 >> provide a customizable variable to use as TIMEOUT argument instead.
 >
 > Maybe, but this isn't a documented convention AFAICS,

We can hardly say in the doc-string of ‘x-show-tip’ that

   This is an internal function; Lisp code should call `tooltip-show'.

and then explain how to call this function from Lisp code.

 > and it's
 > inconvenient to have to dig to find which default to set.  There's
 > tooltip, pos-tip, 10 packages that depend on pos-tip, and probably a
 > bunch more depending on tooltip. It would be nice to have one setting
 > that applies in all cases where other customization has not happened,
 > instead of using a hardcoded default. Don't you think?
 >
 > I opened this issue based on the experience that it took me some
 > non-trivial amount of time to figure out that I had to configure
 > flycheck-pos-tip-delay, and not tooltip-delay.

I don't know flycheck but ‘tooltip-delay’ is the delay _before_ showing
the tip.  Earlier we were talking about ‘tooltip-hide-delay’.

 > flycheck-pos-tip
 > follows the convention that you outlined above, but that convention
 > wasn't obvious to me, and doesn't yield a consistent or very nice
 > experience (any time I install a package that uses tooltips, I need to
 > wonder configure its timeout, unless it uses tooltip — which I can't
 > easily guess).

Any package that optionally provides its own delay for hiding tips
should, by default, use the value of ‘tooltip-hide-delay’ for that
option.

martin