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Re: send-invisible is not an obvious name
From: |
Francesco Potorti` |
Subject: |
Re: send-invisible is not an obvious name |
Date: |
Tue, 22 Oct 2002 09:09:57 +0200 |
> > I had to enter my password and since I knew that a command
> > existed to do that I tried to gess its name, to no avail. I had to do a
> > search for `password' in the manual to find it.
>
> I'd say that's what you're supposed to do, and if you could find it by
> searching the manual, then things are working properly. We can't encode
> documentation into all function names!
I was not clear. I had to look in the manual and to a M-s password RET,
which is not the normal way, and found obviously many instances of the
word before finding what I was looking for.
Okay, this may be a shortcoming of the manual, and indexing
send-invisible properly would correct the problem.
What I meant is that it is not reasonable that a user should look in the
manual for such a basic functionality. It should be immediate and
natural.
[about a mneu entry]
> That would be reasonable; however I think `Send input invisibly' (or
> `without echoing') is a pretty good title for this menu entry...
Tha would do. But it makes no sense to a user. It only makes sense to
a programmer. The user only wants to write invisibly when entering a
password, and that is what he is looking for. A programmer knows that
this is only an instance of a wider range of possibilities, but as for
the practical usage, that function is in fact made for passwords, so the
generalization in the name is only theoretical.