Re: Odd characters in the fast tags selection interface

["Christopher M. Miles" <numbchild@gmail.com>]

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Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> 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.

I prefer this second way, currently I don't know how to scroll tag
selection buffer. By using "paging" can solve the assigned keys problem.
Also used for other tags.

>
> 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


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