help-gnu-emacs
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Emacs improvements


From: Tim X
Subject: Re: Emacs improvements
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:07:47 +1100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Davin Pearson <davin.pearson@gmail.com> writes:

> On my website (www.davinpearson.com) I have outlined 12 different
> improvements to Emacs.  Only one of these have I submitted to the
> Emacs Lisp List at DAMTP, Cambridge University, namely trashcan.el.
>
> Would it be worthwhile to my time to submit all of my improvements to
> the Emacs Lisp List?
>
> Another thing that I thought of today is how I have made dired to
> behave like Windows Explorer on steriods in the following ways:
>
> Different files appear in different colours (e.g. folders appear in
> blue, *.png appears lightmagenta, *.c appears in bold and HTML
> documents appear with a yellow background.  Text documents and
> fundamental mode documents appear with no decoration at all.
>
> Pressing return on certain files such as images runs cygstart to
> launch that an appropriate program much like Windows Explorer.
>
> I have personally found Emacs' font lock support very useful and I
> imagine other Emacs users would find my code helpful too.

I think you should certainly make your code available. This has two
benefits. Anyone interested enough can install and try out your
modifications, providing a good testing base for finding bugs and
refining how things work and secondly, if it is used/adopted by a lot of
people, it adds weight to any argument for making it part of standard
emacs. 

Provided the functionality can be disabled, it does not adversely impact
performance when running under a text console or remotely over X and is
well supported on all platforms that support emacs, I have no problems
with your proposals, except maybe the last one. I dislike systems that
try to be too smart because too often they get it wrong. I find the
existing dired features do what you suggest pretty well already.
Perhapse, we could change default values (though need a very good
argument), make features more obvious via documentation improvements or
perhaps unify setup/configuration in some way. Most of what you suggest
already appears to be there 

         * Images supported by emacs are displayed when I hit enter on
           them already. Most common image formats are already supported.
         * dired-guess-shell functionality provides pretty good defaults
           for 'executing' programs and I don't see where your
           suggestion would improve it.
         * I really like keeping the act of executing a file and viewing
           or editing it distinct and would prefer not to see that
           'muddied'. Currently, enter for editing, v for viewing and !
           for executing.
         * I don't necessarily want external programs run when I hit
           enter or view file for many programs i.e. html, ps, etc
         * doc-view handles display of many file types already i.e. pdf,
           dvi, etc
         * browse-url handles display/rendering of html content already,
           though you do need to setup a hot key or tweak
           dired-guess-shell setup
         * Given emacs is single threaded, I'm not convinced it makes a
           really good general purpose file browser. It certainly makes
           sense in the context of viewing/editing content, bu for
           general execution of programs, I'm more likely to use an OS
           level file browser.

Of course, this is just one opinion. Certainly make your code available
if you can as that gives the most choice. 

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]