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Bug 156501

Summary: key bindings and commands should be discoverable interactively
Product: editor Reporter: jrose <jrose>
Component: Key bindingsAssignee: Svata Dedic <sdedic>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: blocker    
Priority: P3    
Version: 6.x   
Hardware: All   
OS: Mac OS X   
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT Exception Reporter:

Description jrose 2009-01-09 01:06:56 UTC
Please supply the following interactive queries on the Help menu:

- Describe Gesture: provide information about the binding of a keyboard or mouse key, toolbar or context menu item, or other gesture
-- should give the canonical name of the resulting command (or macro, etc.), and offer to give further info. about the command

- Describe This: provide more information about a given UI glyph
-- especially those little guys in the left gutter of the editor:  sometimes they don't even have pop-up hints

- Show Bindings: produce a dump of all commands (or macros, etc.) bound to all keys, menu items, or other gestures
-- should allow some narrowing such as partial gesture input (e.g., key sequences that begin with Control or end with A)
-- should allow some widening such as check boxes to report on contextual menus relevant to various UI elements

- Where is Command: given a command (or macro, etc.), report which key(s), gestures, and buttons it is bound to

- Execute Command: select and execute a command once, without first binding it to a key (very useful for trying out new commands!)

- Command Apropos: find commands relevant to a given search word

- Setting Apropos: find settings relevant to a given search word

- Edit Command: given a command, start editing its source code (NB wizard mode only)

- Show Last Gestures: show what I just typed and/or moused recently, esp. which commands just executed

(Background: I am used to the Emacs help facility for key bindings and commands, and am frustrated at the difficulty of getting information out of the 
Options/Keymap dialog.  Emacs makes it easy to ask what a key is bound to, where a command is, and what a command does.  To discover similar 
information for NB means wading through the website, and sifting through the Mac-vs.-PC and 5.0-vs.-6.0 differences, both of which wasted part of 
today for me.)
Comment 1 Vitezslav Stejskal 2009-01-12 11:59:28 UTC
Have you tried 'Quick Search' (ctrl+I)? IMO it provides some of the queries you mentioned here.
Comment 2 Svata Dedic 2012-05-17 13:34:19 UTC
No further response or objection to Vita's suggestion; I consider this issue fixed.