Re: Proposal to improve the nomenclature of scrolling directions

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Drew Adams" <address@hidden>
> Cc: <address@hidden>, <address@hidden>, <address@hidden>,
>         <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 10:03:39 -0800
> 
> > > Bad idea.  "page" in Emacs function and variable names has 
> > > a meaning that revolves around the use of form-feed (^L)
> > > as a page delimiter.
> > 
> > Only veteran Emacs users know about that meaning of "page",
> 
> Evidence for that claim?

Frequent postings on help-gnu-emacs.

> And what constitutes a "veteran"?  Anyone who has ever used a command such as
> `count-lines-page', `backward-page', `sort-pages', `narrow-to-page',
> `what-page', or `ps-nb-pages-region'?  Anyone who has ever customized an 
> option
> such as `page-delimiter', `ps-even-or-odd-pages', or `ps-selected-pages'?

All of the above, and then some.

> > and those should have no problems with the current command names.
> 
> Irrelevant whether they do or do not.

It is relevant.  The old names will stay.

> The point is that adding things whose names include `page' but that have 
> nothing
> to do with Emacs pages adds confusion and works against name-matching (e.g.
> apropos).  That's all.

There's no confusion here, because PageDown is a key present on any
widely used keyboard today.  The notion of "paging down" is familiar
to everyone.

> > And anyway, bringing up arguments from Emacs traditions
> 
> Who said anything about tradition?  I'm talking about the current Emacs
> behavior, not just its behavior since Day One.

"Pages" in Emacs, i.e. chunks of text delimited by ^L characters, are
a feature not shared by most other GUI applications.  It is
traditional Emacs behavior to support such pages.  When you talk about
that behavior, you necessarily talk about traditional Emacs behavior,
from day one till today.

> In general, "page" has a specific operational meaning in Emacs, and scrolling
> (unless it is scrolling up to the next/previous page delimiter) has nothing to
> do with that meaning.

Indeed, it does not.  Nevertheless, Emacs users freely use the
PageDown key, and I don't think I ever heard a complaint that it is
confusing why that key does not scroll by Emacs pages.

So I submit that there's no problem here, as a matter of fact.