Tmux is a command line application, and the man page is a well understood convention for anyone operating on the command line. I don't think it's unfair to fault tmux for poor discoverability because its manual is informative, easy to read, and fits in a single man page. It's also unnecessary to "read through all of the documentation" before using tmux, spending 3 minutes to read the first two sections would suffice.
> Press ctr+b, then ?. Compare this to screen's ctrl+a, then ?. Both are quite terrible, but tmux definitely leaves users more disoriented.
There's no difference between the two. People who refuse to read the manual or any of the abundant online tutorials won't be able to deduce either.
> A simple message saying "you are in XYZ mode, type :help xyz-mode to get help" could go a long way.
I'd prefer applications like tmux not stand out more than necessary. Displaying that sort of message every time I press some key can get annoying pretty fast.
Tmux is a command line application, and the man page is a well understood convention for anyone operating on the command line. I don't think it's unfair to fault tmux for poor discoverability because its manual is informative, easy to read, and fits in a single man page. It's also unnecessary to "read through all of the documentation" before using tmux, spending 3 minutes to read the first two sections would suffice.
> Press ctr+b, then ?. Compare this to screen's ctrl+a, then ?. Both are quite terrible, but tmux definitely leaves users more disoriented.
There's no difference between the two. People who refuse to read the manual or any of the abundant online tutorials won't be able to deduce either.
> A simple message saying "you are in XYZ mode, type :help xyz-mode to get help" could go a long way.
I'd prefer applications like tmux not stand out more than necessary. Displaying that sort of message every time I press some key can get annoying pretty fast.