Re: Fiddling with the menus

[Juri Linkov]

>> 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.

Then we could replace these items with "Search files" (grep)
and "Recursive grep" (rgrep) in Edit->Search.

>>     * 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.

I think there are enough places in Emacs (tutorials, manuals) that
teach using M-< and M->.

>> 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).

BTW, the Options menu should also contain an item to toggle
`delete-selection-mode' since there is much demand for it.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/