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

[Stefan Monnier]

> • Emacs's Menu Usability Problem
>  http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_menu.html

Some of them sound like good ideas.  Here's my take on it:

> The non-interactive search menus are for one-time use, and do not have
> keyboard shortcuts. This operation method is extremely inefficient, and
> probably is almost never used statistically. Since Emacs provides
> interactive search features, both by menu as well as by keyboard
> shortcut, it should replace these one-time find menu items

I agree that getting rid of the non-interactive search items in
Edit->Search would be a good simplification.

> Emacs's Edit menu.
> The 3 Goto menu items are not much useful.
>     * The “Goto Buffer Position...” invokes the command goto-char, which
>     moves the cursor to the nth char in a buffer. If a programer wants
>     to go to a particular position, typically it is done by line number
>     and column number. The “goto-char” is used for elisp
>     programing. Perhaps less than 2% of Emacs users actually program in
>     elisp. Elisp programers wouldn't need a menu for goto-char. They'd
>     call it by typing M-x.

Yes this one seems pretty useless.

>     * 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.

[ Please write GNU/Linux rather than just "Linux" when talking about the
  whole system. ]

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.

> Emacs 22's Options menu.
>     * The “Active Region Highlighting” is on by default in Emacs
>     23. This behavior is standard in all modern editors.  For old time
>     Emacs users who want it off, they can be easily do so thru
>     Customization menu or elisp code.

Maybe this will make sense at some point, but just activating it by
default in Emacs-23 required a fair bit of confrontation.  One of the
conditions to turn it on was that it be as easy as possible to turn it
back off, even in those cases where modifying the .emacs is not an
option (e.g. using someone else's Emacs).

>     * 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 Blinking Cursor is standard behavior in all editors.  Probably
>     less than 0.1% users would want to tweak it.  If a tweaker wants it
>     off, he can easily do so using the Customization menu.

This option is one of the ones that generated the largest amount of
noise when Emacs-21 came out (along with the tool-bar and the fringes).
I personally find it very annoying.  So here again, it's in the menu so
it can easily be turned off even in sessions where the .emacs cannot
be modified.

>     * The Enter Debugger commands are used for elisp programing
>     only.  They are not useful for vast majority of Emacs users.

I wouldn't mind removing it from the menu.

>     * The tool-bar is a bar consisting of largish buttons for copy, cut,
>     paste, open, etc.  This is not useful for most people who use Emacs.

I'd tend to agree, but I'm not sure I'm ready to turn it off by default.

>     * 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.

>     * 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.

>     * 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.

No opinion on this one.


        Stefan