> every single app that uses a lot of keybind sequences could benefit from it, especially if it becomes a bit smarter and only shows a popup if you don't finish the sequence right away
Counterpoint: the sequence should only have an opportunity to be "unfinished" if there's actually a choice to make. Showing too many choices at once can be overwhelming and in the Vim environment there are usually a ton of choices. Consider for example if I input `n10` in editing mode; that could be followed by all kinds of repeatable actions and it could be followed by another digit of the count.
> if there's actually a choice to make.
I don't get it, there is always a choice to make, which is which action to continue with?
> Showing too many choices at once can be overwhelming
It can't be more overwhelming than having to remember all of those choices and using external docs/configs to look them up! Besides, it's not like there are no improvements possible and you have to show everything at once. For example, all your "all kinds of repetable actions" can be limited by the most frequently used 10 actions and an "others" submenu you could invoke separately if you were looking for something else. And your "another digit" is just a single line "0-9 continue the count", so what's the issue there?
> I don't get it, there is always a choice to make, which is which action to continue with?
The point is that if the input for a command is XY, there had better also be an XZ. Otherwise XY should just be X.
How is this relevant to the tooltip conversation? If you have XY (without XZ) instead of just X, well, maybe you could simplify, or maybe it still makes sense for you for some reason, whatever, in any case you'd appreciate immediate contextual help if you press X and then forget that Y is the finisher.
Because if the command is just X then you just input X and the action occurs. There is no need for "immediate contextual help" because there is no time wasted on a useless immediate context.
It's bad UI design to have the user input X and then wait for Y before doing anything when there is only one intention the user could actually have in mind. Having a popup say in effect "hey, I'm not going to do anything until you press Y" is not an improvement.
> input X and then wait for Y before doing anything when there is only one intention the user could actually have in mind
That's obviously false, the second possible intention is... cancellation. For example, you can bind Q,Q to quit the app (and no other key is prefixed with a Q), but then you could press Q mistakenly or change your mind at the last moment.
But you continue to argue with your own strawman - nothing about helpful popups changes the underlying behavior. So if your magic design is to run XY just on X press, that would be bad design, but you can still do it! And the popup will never appear because the action is complete, so no help needed.
You’re going to hate that my shortcut for Normal mode is j-k, and I don’t have any other j-* commands.