[help] sidebar help mechanics need work

[saulpw]

In any input mode, help can be cycled with Ctrl+G. I don't particularly like this keybinding but Ctrl+H is of course problematic. Ideas welcome!

There also needs to be a way to:

• show Ctrl+G to cycle help 1/N on edge of sidebar if N>1
• cycle/choose sidebar help with non-input commands
• include title on ddw help screens
• allow templatized ddw with e.g. {sheet.name}
• choose an acceptable default for disp_help
• turn off sidebar
• split-win mode: sidebar appears in the appropriate pane
• __dunder__ should not be markdown [sidebar] __dunder__ should not be markdown #2211

[gennaro-tedesco]

I am adding to this thread to avoid opening a new issue. First of all thank you for all the work on the sidebar, it is awesome!

I have noticed that setting options.disp_sidebar = False in the general .visidatarc does not have any effect, namely the sidebar is always present (I can however hide it with b "toggle sidebar"): perhaps I misunderstood how the option is intended?

[anjakefala]

I think the reason options.sidebar is not doing the trick, is because Sheet-options override general options sometimes, and the disp_sidebar check happens for the Sheet-option.

It could be helpful to have a check that if options.disp_sidebar is False, that trumps the sheet-specific option.

The current workaround for you is to play with options.disp_help = 0. I'm not sure if disp_help will stick around conceptually, but for 3.0.x, you can use it to turn off the sidebar by default.

[gennaro-tedesco]

Commenting from here (as per suggestion to have this discussion here):

Input help can be disabled with vd.options.disp_help=0 with the above change.

I am on the latest release v3.0.2 but still see no difference with vd.options.disp_help=0. For instance when typing / for search or <space> to open the command palette the display on the right hand side still shows - is my understanding incorrect, should this not be hidden now with such option?

[anjakefala]

I am on the latest release v3.0.2 but still see no difference with vd.options.disp_help=0. For instance when typing / for search or to open the command palette the display on the right hand side still shows - is my understanding incorrect, should this not be hidden now with such option?

We noticed that that commit was leading to some confusing changes, and decided to punt on it until 3.1. It needed more room to be polished. We didn't want to need an additional patch release.

If you want to be on the cutting edge, then please install develop, pip3 install git+https://github.com/saulpw/visidata

[ziova]

Hi, any updates on this? vd is unusable if I enable the sidebar

[anjakefala]

Being able to toggle the sidebar while in input mode: #2505

[saulpw]

Okay, I made it so that Ctrl+G cycles the sidebar in command mode and also in input mode. There can be any number of help sheets to cycle through, and one of them is "no sidebar". Let me know if this helps with making the sidebar more palatable!