Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

>> I mean, look at the toolbar that happens when you "emacs -Q": You get an
>> Emacs with a scratch buffer...  with a "Save" icon.  In a buffer that
>> can't be saved.  That's how much attention we've spent on toolbars in
>> two decades.
>
> Well, it actually can be saved, as soon as you type something (C-x C-s
> works), and it's one of the real usage patterns. The button doesn't
> indicate that, though.

Yeah, the save button stays grayed out and you can't click it, which I
take to be an indication that this toolbar hasn't gotten a lot of love.
I mean, it's the toolbar shown in "emacs -Q", and even that one is
pretty nonsensical.

> Maybe you're right. I checked back, and most contemporary text editors
> don't have a toolbar like we do.
>
> Atom/Sublime/VS Code don't have this kind of editor toolbar. IDEA only
> has specialized toolbars for, like, debugging.
>
> The recent versions of Kate (KDE editor) also seem to have removed
> it. GNOME Builder only has a small number of buttons, and they are on
> the title bar. Geany still has a toolbar, though.
>
> Even MS Word, while it has a toolbar for certain features, has moved
> the basic edit buttons to the window titlebar and made them pretty
> small.

I think we should consider setting some standards for what should be in
a toolbar, and normal editing commands shouldn't be there.  That is, a
toolbar should be for things that people want to click a lot, like
"pause" in a media player, or navigation commands like "prev/next" in
*Help*.

I just had a peek at the toolbar in *Help* -- it includes things like
"Save" and "Undo".  No wonder most people disable the thing.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no