GNU bug report logs - #75804
31.0.50; Enlarge or disable `ispell-help-timeout'

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From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Rudolf Adamkovič <rudolf <at> adamkovic.org>, 75804 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#75804: 31.0.50; Enlarge or disable `ispell-help-timeout'
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 18:16:02 -0600

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

>> From: Rudolf Adamkovič <rudolf <at> adamkovic.org>
>> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 12:20:12 +0100
>>
>> As I observe my kids learning Emacs, I often see their struggles, which
>> are mostly caused by "bad" defaults (bad for new users, that is).  Many
>> of these were discussed already: tiny default font, brutalist colors,
>> unfriendly completions (not auto-visible nor auto-updating), no fuzzy
>> matching, no spell checking, and more.
>
> Thank you so much for your friendly comments about Emacs defaults.

FWIW, I agree that most of the above could bear improving.

I'm also very excited to hear about users teaching Emacs to kids!
That's the right spirit, and it's not often that we hear such stories on
this bug tracker.  So thanks for that.

>> Here, I would like to focus on yet-another "bad default" that makes my
>> daughter struggle regularly: the 5-second `ispell-help-timeout'.  For
>> context, she is not confident with her spelling yet, but she does use
>> Emacs every day to write her diary.  The default `ispell-help-timeout'
>> makes it impossible for her to use the Ispell menu comfortably and act
>> confidently.  Me, I cannot read the menu in 5 seconds either.
>>
>> For the reasons given, I suggest we increase the `ispell-help-timeout'
>> to at least 60 seconds, or better disable it altogether.  The help menu
>> is actionable, it lets the user to type the relevant action key right
>> away, so what is the purpose of the timeout, anyway?
>
> This display is for people who already know about the possible
> actions, and just forgot which key activates which action.  An Ispell
> newbie will be confused even if the timeout will be longer, because
> the descriptions of the actions are too terse to be useful.  I think
> newbies should customize ispell-help-in-bufferp to the value
> 'electric', which will cause Emacs to pop up a *Help* buffer which
> pops down only when the user presses 'q'.
>
> However, I agree that the timeout is too short even if the user knows
> what are his/her options.  How about increasing the timeout to 30 sec?

Increasing it to 30 seconds sounds good to me.

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