Subject: bug#75804: 31.0.50; Enlarge or disable `ispell-help-timeout'

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 15:25:32 +0200

> From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
> Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 07:15:45 -0600
> Cc: [email-masked]
> 
> 1. I don't see that we support a nil value, so I think we should add it,
>    and `nil` should mean "never time out".  This would be easier to set
>    than (setq ispell-help-timeout most-positive-fixnum).
> 
> 2. I gave this a try, but actually I'm not at all sure why we should
>    hide the buffer at all, by default.  The user asked to show it, after
>    all, and Emacs is waiting for them to hit a key.  IMO, it is hard to
>    even understand the purpose of this hiding "feature".
> 
>    I think we should just leave it on the screen, which is what the help
>    system does everywhere else.  Users who _really_ want to hide it, for
>    some reason that I don't understand, will just have to customize it
>    back.  So I'm in favor of a `nil` default.

If the user wants the help not to pop down, ever, they should instead
customize ispell-help-in-bufferp to the value 'electric'.  As I wrote
up-thread, keeping the terse help indefinitely makes little sense to
me, since it is nothing more than a short reminder, and is not useful
for people who use Ispell the first time.

Not that I'm against the changes you propose, but at least let's
mention the ispell-help-in-bufferp alternative in the doc streing of
ispell-help-timeout, so that people who want to set it to nil will
have the opportunity of considering the (IMO better) alternative.