GNU bug report logs - #59212
29.0.50; [PATCH] Set default value of bookmark Type

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Set default value of bookmark Type
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 05:56:22 -0300

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Description:
Not a bug per se, but a suggestion for improvement in how Bookmark
displays the Type (added by commit 7c995264359824cc1aca40ca37201db5ed44e659).

Currently, bookmark-bmenu-list (C-x r l) displays a column named Type,
which has a proper value for all handlers (e.g.: Eshell, VC, EWW etc)
except for regular files, in which an empty string is displayed. I
believe the current behavior could be improved by displaying a default
value ("Files") to make the interface more uniform, explicit and to
avoid confusion.

Steps:
1) emacs -Q
2) M-x eshell
3) C-x r m <RET>
4) C-x C-f ~/foo.bar
5) C-x r m <RET>
6) C-x r b

These steps will add two bookmarks (eshell and foo.bar) and will open
the Bookmarks list. The Type column will have values "" and
"Eshell". After the patch below is applied, the Type column will have
values "File" and "Eshell".

[0001-Set-default-value-of-bookmark-Type.patch (text/x-diff, attachment)]

[Message part 3 (text/plain, inline)]

---
Gabriel

Message #8 received at 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>, Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
Cc: 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#59212: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Set default value of bookmark Type
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 11:03:39 +0200

> From: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 05:56:22 -0300
> 
> Description:
> Not a bug per se, but a suggestion for improvement in how Bookmark
> displays the Type (added by commit 7c995264359824cc1aca40ca37201db5ed44e659).
> 
> Currently, bookmark-bmenu-list (C-x r l) displays a column named Type,
> which has a proper value for all handlers (e.g.: Eshell, VC, EWW etc)
> except for regular files, in which an empty string is displayed. I
> believe the current behavior could be improved by displaying a default
> value ("Files") to make the interface more uniform, explicit and to
> avoid confusion.
> 
> Steps:
> 1) emacs -Q
> 2) M-x eshell
> 3) C-x r m <RET>
> 4) C-x C-f ~/foo.bar
> 5) C-x r m <RET>
> 6) C-x r b
> 
> These steps will add two bookmarks (eshell and foo.bar) and will open
> the Bookmarks list. The Type column will have values "" and
> "Eshell". After the patch below is applied, the Type column will have
> values "File" and "Eshell".

Thanks.

Karl, any comments?

Message #11 received at 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>, 
 Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
Cc: 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#59212: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Set default value of bookmark Type
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 02:10:02 -0800

severity 59212 wishlist
thanks

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 05:56:22 -0300
>>
>> Description:
>> Not a bug per se, but a suggestion for improvement in how Bookmark
>> displays the Type (added by commit 7c995264359824cc1aca40ca37201db5ed44e659).
>>
>> Currently, bookmark-bmenu-list (C-x r l) displays a column named Type,
>> which has a proper value for all handlers (e.g.: Eshell, VC, EWW etc)
>> except for regular files, in which an empty string is displayed. I
>> believe the current behavior could be improved by displaying a default
>> value ("Files") to make the interface more uniform, explicit and to
>> avoid confusion.
>>
>> Steps:
>> 1) emacs -Q
>> 2) M-x eshell
>> 3) C-x r m <RET>
>> 4) C-x C-f ~/foo.bar
>> 5) C-x r m <RET>
>> 6) C-x r b
>>
>> These steps will add two bookmarks (eshell and foo.bar) and will open
>> the Bookmarks list. The Type column will have values "" and
>> "Eshell". After the patch below is applied, the Type column will have
>> values "File" and "Eshell".
>
> Thanks.
>
> Karl, any comments?

I'm not Karl, but I've experimented with something similar before and I
found two things:

1. I had to add a type for Dired bookmarks (which are not Files) to
   avoid confusion.

2. Using a default name (I also used "Files", IIRC), just made my long
   list of bookmarks more busy with little benefit.  If anything, it
   made it harder to navigate, as it was harder to make out the
   "special" types of bookmarks.

So all in all, I was not a huge fan of the change.

If we want to add this, I suggest adding a defcustom so that users can
enable or disable this functionality to their liking (or change "Files"
into something else).  I might prefer to disable it, for example.

Message #16 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#59212: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Set default value of bookmark Type
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 17:55:41 -0300

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com> writes:
> I'm not Karl, but I've experimented with something similar before and I
> found two things:
>
> 1. I had to add a type for Dired bookmarks (which are not Files) to
>    avoid confusion.
>
> 2. Using a default name (I also used "Files", IIRC), just made my long
>    list of bookmarks more busy with little benefit.  If anything, it
>    made it harder to navigate, as it was harder to make out the
>    "special" types of bookmarks.
>
> So all in all, I was not a huge fan of the change.
>
> If we want to add this, I suggest adding a defcustom so that users can
> enable or disable this functionality to their liking (or change "Files"
> into something else).  I might prefer to disable it, for example.

1. Good point about Dired. Would be nice to have a Type for regular
files and another one for directories. Is there any approach to
differentiate files from directories that do not rely on IO calls? Some
kind of portable string-check, I guess. I am aware of 'file-directory-p'
and 'file-regular-p', but both will try to read FILENAME, which could
degrade performance in case of long Bookmark lists (and there is also
Tramp).

2. Thanks for the inputs. It's not clear for me what do you mean by
"more busy" or "harder to navigate". How do you normally navigate in
long Bookmark lists? What are the use-cases where a visual distinction
between empty and non-empty strings of the Type column is useful? What
about the distinction between Types Eshell, DocView and VC, where the
user has to read the contents of the Type column?

I am against adding a new defcustom for such trivial thing, Emacs has
already too much. I think this proposed change is a better default to
novices, and advanced users can add an advice around
bookmark-type-from-full-record. If we want to customize this behavior, I
propose something like a defcustom that offers an alist of
'((TYPE . DISPLAY-STRING)).

I also suggest to add a new 'type choice to bookmark-sort-flag, which I
can do in a new wishlist.

---
Gabriel

Message #19 received at 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
To: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>
Cc: 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: On improving Bookmarks
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 11:28:30 -0600

[I'm combining the original bug-59212 thread with an emacs-devel 
thread here.]

On 12 Nov 2022, Eli Zaretskii wrote in Bug #59212: 
>> From: Gabriel <gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 05:56:22 -0300
>> 
>> Description:
>> Not a bug per se, but a suggestion for improvement in how 
>> Bookmark
>> displays the Type (added by commit 
>> 7c995264359824cc1aca40ca37201db5ed44e659).
>> 
>> Currently, bookmark-bmenu-list (C-x r l) displays a column 
>> named Type,
>> which has a proper value for all handlers (e.g.: Eshell, VC, 
>> EWW etc)
>> except for regular files, in which an empty string is 
>> displayed. I
>> believe the current behavior could be improved by displaying a 
>> default
>> value ("Files") to make the interface more uniform, explicit 
>> and to
>> avoid confusion.
>> 
>> Steps:
>> 1) emacs -Q
>> 2) M-x eshell
>> 3) C-x r m <RET>
>> 4) C-x C-f ~/foo.bar
>> 5) C-x r m <RET>
>> 6) C-x r b
>> 
>> These steps will add two bookmarks (eshell and foo.bar) and 
>> will open
>> the Bookmarks list. The Type column will have values "" and
>> "Eshell". After the patch below is applied, the Type column 
>> will have
>> values "File" and "Eshell".
>
>Thanks.
>
>Karl, any comments?

I don't have a strong opinion on this UI suggestion.

For users who set mostly file-or-directory bookmarks, and don't 
set very many bookmarks of other types, then it probably makes 
sense to treat files/directories as the default and not show a 
type for them.  That way, the unusual bookmarks stand out (which 
is useful because they might have different response-time 
characteristics, or other interactive idiosyncracies, than that 
user's typical bookmark does).

On the other hand, for users for whom file/directory bookmarks are 
not more common than other kinds of bookmarks, showing "File" or 
"Directory" like any other type would probably be better.  Those 
users are already accustomed to a variety of interactivity 
characteristics from their bookmarks anyway, so it makes less 
sense to trade away consistency of display in favor of stand-out 
visibility of certain cases.

But these are really minor differences; they're not terribly 
persuasive either way.  I think I'm still at "no strong opinion". 
I wouldn't stand in the way of the change.

Continuing on to the later conversation on emacs-devel about this:

On 16 Nov 2022, Gabriel wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I think there are some opportunities for improvements in 
>Bookmarks (in
>general and in how it support Types) and would like to collect 
>general
>feedback and directions before reporting bugs or proposing 
>patches,
>especially considering if such changes would be useful, the 
>effort to
>implement them and how to handle compatibility.
>
>Bookmarks has support for Types besides regular "Files" or 
>"Directories"
>(opened with Dired).  A quick xref in current Emacs master branch 
>shows
>the following Types:
>
>- "DocView"
>- "Eshell"
>- "Gnus"
>- "Help"
>- "Image-Dired"
>- "Info"
>- "Man"
>- "EWW"
>- "VC"
>- "WoMan"
>
>1) The empty "Type" column on C-x r l (bookmark-bmenu-list)
>
>Bookmarks shows a proper value in the Type column of 
>bookmark-bmenu-list
>for all Types, except for regular "Files" and "Directories", in 
>which
>shows an empty string.  I believe that displaying the actual Type 
>rather
>an empty string for these cases would make the interface more 
>consistent
>and easier for navigation.  See bug#59212 for the open 
>discussion.
>Besides the question regarding the real value of this change, I
>currently don't know how to easily distinguish between "Files" 
>and
>"Directories" without relying on IO calls 
>(e.g. file-directory-p), which
>could degrade performance in case of long Bookmarks lists.  We 
>could
>display the string "File" for both "Files" and "Directories", but 
>it
>would be a worse experience for users to not provide such 
>distinction.

Could we just use a combined term like "File/Dir" or "File/Path" 
or just "Path" or something?  Not the perfect user experience, but 
an 80% solution.  Obviously, we'd want to keep the width small.

>2) The usage of "File" and "Filename" in docs and interface
>
>In docs (e.g. (info "(emacs)Bookmarks")) and interface (e.g. the 
>"File"
>column in bookmark-bmenu-list), we can find several occurrences 
>of the
>terms "File" and "Filename" (and related terms), which I think is
>inconsistent since Bookmarks supports Types that do not really 
>have
>these concepts (e.g. "Help", "Man", "EWW", "Gnus").  A better 
>term would
>be "Location", which is already used in some places
>(e.g. bookmark-location, bookmark-relocate, the 'location 
>property).
>Thus, I propose to make "Location" the official term in docs, 
>interface
>and code, and to obsolete "File", "Filename" and related ones.

+1.  This makes a lot of sense, independently of whatever we do in 
the Type column of the Bookmark Menu.

The rest of your post on emacs-devel isn't really related to bug 
#59212, so I'll follow up separately to it in a moment.

Best regards,
-Karl

Message #22 received at 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
Cc: gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com, 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#59212: On improving Bookmarks
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 21:33:42 +0200

> Cc: 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
> From: Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 11:28:30 -0600
> 
> Could we just use a combined term like "File/Dir" or "File/Path" 
> or just "Path" or something?

Not "Path", please.  The GNU Coding Standards frown on using "path"
for anything except PATH-style directory lists.

Message #25 received at 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: gabriel376 <at> hotmail.com, 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#59212: On improving Bookmarks
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 13:47:10 -0600

On 16 Nov 2022, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Cc: 59212 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
>> From: Karl Fogel <kfogel <at> red-bean.com>
>> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 11:28:30 -0600
>> 
>> Could we just use a combined term like "File/Dir" or 
>> "File/Path" 
>> or just "Path" or something?
>
>Not "Path", please.  The GNU Coding Standards frown on using 
>"path"
>for anything except PATH-style directory lists.

Thanks -- "Path" is out, then.

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