The Magit experience is due to the use of the transient package for its UI.

Some other packages also use it. Most notably for my personal usage is the gptel package.

▲ tarsius 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The Magit experience is due to the use of the transient package for its UI.

(I'm the author of Magit and Transient. (Though not the original author of Magit.))

The transient menus certainly play an important role but I think other characteristics are equally important.

A few years ago I tried to provide an abstract overview of Magit's "interface concepts": https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git-interface/. (If it sounds a bit like a sales pitch, that's because it is; I wrote it for the Kickstarter campain.)

	▲	f1shy 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is my experience. While transient mode helped at the beginning for discovery. I learned fast the 10 things I use constantly, and never look the transient buffer. When I want to do something, I see the documentation, for me it is often easier than guessing and searching. Things like spin-off are absolutely gold.

▲ dimitar 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Indeed! I went back just to mention it owes its incredible UX to the transient package, I am going to look up more uses for it. Do recommend more if you can, please!

▲ pkal 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Transient is the worst part about Magit IMO (the best parts are how you can prepare a commit to just include the right changes, or the functionality bound inside the transient menus that make complex operations such as fixups or rebases trivial). Transient UIs are consistently uncomfortable to work with, and could usually be replaced by just using a regular special-mode keymap in a custom buffer. The fact that Transient hooks into the MVC and breaks elementary navigation such as using isearch or switching around buffers has irritated me ever since Magit adopted the new interface.

The real neat thing about Emacs' text interface is that it is just text that you can consistently manipulate and interact with. It is precisely the fact that I can isearch, use Occur write out a region to a file, diff two buffers, use find-file-at-point, etc. that makes it so interesting to me at least.

A far more interesting example than Magit is the compile buffer (from M-x compile): This is just a regular text buffer with a specific major mode that highlights compiler errors so that you can follow them to the referenced files (thereby relegating line-numbers to an implementation detail that you don't have to show the user at all times). But you can also save the buffer, with the output from whatever the command was onto disk. If you then decide to re-open the buffer again at whatever point, it still all looks just as highlighted as before (where the point is not that it just uses color for it's own sake, but to semantically highlight what different parts of the buffer signify) and you can even just press "g" -- the conventional "revert" key -- to run the compile job again, with the same command as you ran the last time. This works because all the state is syntactically present in the file (from the file local variable that indicates the major mode to the error messages that Emacs can recognize), and doesn't have to be stored outside of the file in in-memory data structures that are lost when you close Emacs/reboot your system. The same applies to grepping btw, as M-x grep uses a major mode that inherits the compile-mode.

▲ tarsius 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Transient UIs [...] could usually be replaced by just using a regular special-mode keymap in a custom buffer.

For people who can look at a list of key bindings once and have them memorized, maybe. Turns out most people are not like that, and appreciate an interface that accounts for that.

You also completely ignore that the menus are used to set arguments to be used by the command subsequently invoked, and that the enabled/disabled arguments and their values can be remembered for future invocations.

> The fact that Transient hooks into the MVC and breaks elementary navigation such as using isearch

Not true. (Try it.) This was true for very early versions; it hasn't been true for years.

> or switching around buffers

Since you earlier said that transient menus could be replaced with regular prefix keys, it seems appropriate to point out that transient menus share this "defect" with regular prefix keys, see https://github.com/magit/transient/issues/17#issuecomment-46.... (Except that in the case of transient you actually can enable such buffer switching, it's just strongly discouraged because you are going to shoot yourself in the foot if you do that, but if you really want to you can, see https://github.com/magit/transient/issues/114#issuecomment-8....

> has irritated me ever since Magit adopted the new interface.

I usually do not respond to posts like this (anymore), but sometimes the urge is just too strong.

I have grown increasingly irritated by your behavior over the last few weeks. Your suggestion to add my cond-let* to Emacs had a list of things "you are doing wrong" attached. You followed that up on Mastodon with (paraphrasing) "I'm gonna stop using Magit because it's got a sick new dependency". Not satisfied with throwing out my unconventional syntax suggestion, you are now actively working on making cond-let* as bad as possible. And now you are recycling some old misconceptions about Transient, which can at best be described as half-truths.

	▲	pkal 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> For people who can look at a list of key bindings once and have them memorized, maybe. Turns out most people are not like that, and appreciate an interface that accounts for that. To clarify, the "custom buffer" can list the bindings. Think of Ediff and the control buffer at the bottom of the frame. I am not saying that transient offers nothing over regular prefix keys, there is a common design pattern that has some definitive and useful value. My objection is that the implementation is more complex than it should be and this complexity affects UX issues. > Not true. (Try it.) This was true for very early versions; it hasn't been true for years. Then I was mistaken about the implementation, but on master C-s breaks transient buffers for me on master and I cannot use C-h k as usual to find out what a key-press execute. These are the annoyances I constantly run into that break what I tried to describe in my previous comment. > Except that in the case of transient you actually can enable such buffer switching, it's just strongly discouraged because you are going to shoot yourself in the foot if you do that I did not know about this, so thank you for the link. I will probably have to take a closer look, but from a quick glance over the issue, I believe that the problem that you are describing indicates that the fear I mentioned above w.r.t. the complexity of transient might be true. > I usually do not respond to posts like this (anymore), but sometimes the urge is just too strong. I understand your irritation and don't want to deny its validity. We do not have to discuss this publicly in a subthread about DOS IDEs, but I am ready to chat any time. I just want you to know that if I am not saying anything to personally insult you. Comments I make on cond-let and Magit sound the way they do because I am also genuinely irritated and concerned about developments in the Emacs package space. To be honest, it often doesn't occur to me that you would read my remarks, and I say this without any malicious or ulterior motives, in my eyes you are still a much more influential big-shot in the Emacs space, while I see myself as just a junior janitor, who's opinions nobody cares about. But these self-image and articulation problems are mine, as are their consequences, so I will do better to try to remember that the internet is a public space where anyone can see anything.

▲ internet_points 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Odd, I can `C-s` just fine in transient buffers. It works exactly like in other buffers.

The `C-h` override is pretty cool there too, e.g. if from magit-status I do `C-h -D` (because I'm wondering what "-D Simplify by decoration" means), then it drops me straight into Man git-log with point at

       --simplify-by-decoration
           Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.

(Ooh, I learnt a new trick from writing a comment, who say social media is a waste of time)

▲

pkal 10 hours ago | parent [-]

OK, try the following in a Transient buffer:

- Search for something using C-s - Exit isearch by moving the point (e.g. C-n) - Is the transient buffer still usable for you? In my case it becomes just a text buffer and all the shortcuts just got mapped to self-insert-command.

	▲	sexyman48 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Dayum, given Transient's prickliness (I always feel like I'm walking on eggshells when I'm in it) I've never dared to C-s. But I tried this, and yeah, the transient reverts to a plain text buffer, and you're left in the lurch.

▲ sexyman48 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You say a lot of dumb ____ (but to be fair, I said a lot more when I was your age), but your disdain for transient is on the money. I'm a satisfied magit user, but transient is a blatant UX error and a confounded implementation. Some guy spends his 20% time hawking an entire suite around transient. No one cares.

▲ bowsamic 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I agree. I think transient is one of the less appealing things about magit and isn't really very emacs-y. Also, you still have to memorise them anyway