Re: Fiddling with the menus (was: bug#4043: 23.1; thanks for emacs 23!)

[Lennart Borgman]

On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Stefan Monnier<address@hidden> wrote:
> I agree that getting rid of the non-interactive search items in
> Edit->Search would be a good simplification.

I would suggest burying them deeper down in the menus instead. For
advertising reasons it is still good to have them there.


>> Emacs's Edit menu.
>>     * The Goto beginning/ending of buffer is useless as a menu. Users
>>     can intuitively press the Page Up, Page Down keys, scroll the mouse,
>>     or “Ctrl+Home” and “Ctrl+End” to do the same thing.  All these
>>     methods are familiar to users because they are implemented in most
>>     apps across Windows, Mac, Linux.  For those using Emacs's “M-<” and
>>     “M->” shortcuts, they don't need the menu or the menu to
>>     remind them.
>
> Not sure about these.  They're not very useful maybe, but they do serve
> the purpose of indicating what is the canonical keybinding for
> those commands.

For whom? I think new users will probably use C-End etc.


>>     * The “Case-Insensitive Search” should be moved to be together with
>>     the interactive search menu under Edit.
>
> This also sounds OK, except for the problem of making the behavior of
> the "Save options" menu entry clear: currently this entry saves all the
> options that appear above in the menu.  So if we move an entry to some
> other menu, we get into some trouble.

The "Save options" is in my opinion confusing. I think it would be
better to ask for each option if it would be set permanently or just
temporarily.

This would be easier to understand and there would be no obstacle of
this kind for moving them.


>>     * The Scroll-bar and Fringe menu items should be gone.  Scroll-bar is
>>     a standard feature in all applications.  If a power user wants it
>>     off, he can do so thru the customization menu.  The Fringe adjustment
>>     is again for tweakers.  It adds distraction.
>
> Those entries mostly play the role of advertisement.

Maybe bury them under "Show/Hide - Advanced - Scroll-bar" etc?


>>     * The Time, Battery, are of little use. Their functionality are
>>     provided by the OS's tool bar. Again, for geeks who need it, it is
>>     easy to call the command by “M-x”.
>
> I'd tend to agree.  But I also do not remember why they were added, so
> maybe there's just something I'm missing.

Bury it under advanced as above.


>>     * The Size Indication, which shows the file size in the mode-line,
>>     should be gone too because for those who needs this feature, they
>>     don't need a menu.

Bury it under advanced.