RE: Turning off tooltip-mode wipes out echo-area message

[Drew Adams]

    > I've pared this down quite a bit, but I haven't isolated the problem
    > completely. The two libraries below give a reproducible test,
    > in any case. Neither library has anything to do with tooltip-mode,
BTW.

    When you reported this the first time, I looked into it and published
    my findings:

AFAIK, I've never reported this before. I just discovered it today.

    AFAICS, this is how the code is supposed to work,

That would be very poor design indeed. Tooltips should always be only
temporary, and they should restore the state that existed before they are
displayed - wherever they are displayed.

Besides, there is no tooltip actually shown here, and there is no reason to
display any. A fortiori, there is no reason for the tooltip code to
(permanently) wipe out the echo area, especially when it has no message to
display.

    but for some strange reason I couldn't understand, the results
    on GNU/Linux are different.

    > My guess is that some tooltip that is not even seen is somehow being
    > displayed in the echo area, and that is wiping out the message.

    No need for guessing anymore: I've seen in the code that the echo area
    is cleared (IIRC, because some of the menu items don't have help
    echo).

That's unacceptable. I don't understand your remark in parens (there is no
menu involved in what I reported), but there is no reason to implement bad
design, no matter what help-echo bug might exist for menu items.

    I need help from someone who has an easy access to a Unix or GNU/Linux
    machine and can explain why the echo area isn't cleared there in the
    example you posted, like it is on Windows.  The code clearly shows
    that we intentionally clear the echo area.

No, that is the wrong approach. Don't try to figure out how to break things
on GNU/Linux. Please try to figure out how to fix the design flaw on
Windows.

It makes absolutely no sense for tooltip code to cause loss of important
messages in the echo area. Let's not lose sight of what's important:
Tooltips are secondary; intentional messages from a program are primary. A
program cannot even stop the tooltip code from inhibiting its messages,
apparently. This is a serious design flaw.