Re: Odd characters in the fast tags selection interface

[Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com>]

Hanno <hanno@hoowl.se> writes:

>>> - after "a..z" runs out, '{', '|' and '}' are being used which seems
>>>   reasonable -- but after that, I get '\200' and similar before reaching
>>>   '©'...
>>
>>This is indeed true, but what can we do? There are only that many
>>characters in the keyboard. We may instead start using two-key
>>combinations for tags beyond #26, similar to org-capture. Patches are
>>welcome!
>
> Thanks for the fast reply and fully agreed! I would indeed argue that automatically generated keys are not useful beyond a certain number (N=26?) as they could change with new tags and thus are hard to memorize. And taking in >N random choices every time is hardly "fast select" anymore.
>
> In fact, the docstring for =org-fast-tag-selection= says that only a-z would be automatically assigned. That sounds reasonable to me (otherwise one can define more keys via =org-tag-persistent-alist=). Maybe this is a bug after all? If more than 26 choices are desired, maybe A-Z (i.e. capital letters) could extend the list before more unusual characters?
>
> What do you think?
>
> I am not at my computer right now but could try to come up with a patch later.

I am not sure. Omitting (random) part of the tags sounds awkward - some
tags will be assigned keys and some not. I guess something that will
improve the current situation would be simply not printing chars beyond
a-z, while still listing all the tags - it will be less awkward compared
to current situation when a key is printed but cannot be used anyway.

Or we may provide "paging" approach that will re-assign a-z keys when
user presses C-n/C-p. Though I do not like this idea too much because we
have a more universal menu backend in works at
https://orgmode.org/list/87zgisvuu5.fsf@localhost Adding new feature to
tag menu does not feel like a good direction to go. If we decide to go
this way at the end, we may, at least, also need to update
org-fast-todo-selection along similar lines.

Finally, we may simply not list tags with keys beyond "z" at all only
indicating that there are more by showing some text at the end of the
menu.

>>> - when defining my own keys, they are not displayed in the top; instead
>>>   their characters are missing in the 'a'..'z' range leaving more room
>>>   for odd and very difficult-to-type characters
>>I think that it would make sense to have `org-tag-persistent-alist`
>>staff being shown on top. Unless there are objections I can merge this
>>trivial change.
>
> Thanks, that already improves the usability a lot!

Done on main via a0b21e3f1.
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git/commit/?id=a0b21e3f1c131bc6ee6398e2d3dda20944d6b358

-- 
Ihor Radchenko,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at https://orgmode.org/.
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