Re: More visible mini-buffer prompt face

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Drew Adams wrote:
> >     I wonder if it would not be better to have a more visible
> >     face for the minibuffer prompt by default. My suggestion
> >     would be using a visible background color (some not too
> >     sharp yellow perhaps).
> >
> > What color do you get now?
> > Which of the options in the defface is being used?
> > Could you propose a patch in that defface?

Thanks for constructive feedback.

> I see no reason for the prompt to stand out more, and changing the
> background color is a bad idea, IMO. Background colors are often used to
> highlight particular sections of text, not just to present normal text. Why
> should a normal _prompt_ stand out especially?

Because it needs the user attention.

> If your code pops up menus that attract the user away from the minibuffer,
> and then you expect the user to notice a minibuffer prompt that you issue,
> then why not make the minibuffer prompt stand out more _in your code_? This
> sounds like a UI (dialog) problem in your code, not a problem with the
> default Emacs minibuffer prompt face.

That is a good point. However I believe it is not just in the case of my 
code. The same problem appears in other cases within Emacs IMO.

> In general, minibuffer prompts appear when the user expects them; in fact,
> they are usually initiated by the user. 

I believe at least a new user does not expect the prompt sometimes. The 
reason for this is of course that the Emacs UI is different from w

> A normal prompt should not especially stand out;

Why not?

> Your point about error messages is different (independent). In that case,
> the user might not expect to see stuff appear in the echo area, so you might
> want to attract attention to it. Nothing prevents particular code from
> applying text properties to messages in the echo area.

I believe I did that before when using (message ...). However now it 
does not seem to work. Can you do it?

> That too is best left
> up to the particular application, IMO. The default message face should not
> stand out.

Yes, but I was talking about error messages.