Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org,  dgutov@yandex.ru
> Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 10:37:10 +0100
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > I don't understand what you'd like to have instead.  Would you like
> > Emacs to instead constantly add and remove tool-bar buttons as they
> > become available/not available?  I think this would be much more
> > annoying, and will cause even more people to disable the tool bar.
> 
> We're discussing different options.  I don't think somebody has
> suggested dynamically adding/removing buttons from the toolbar, though?
> 
> What has been suggested is that only modes where it makes sense should
> enable the toolbar (and there probably aren't that many where it makes
> much sense).

But that's exactly the situation I described above.  Suppose you type
"M-x": this enters the minibuffer, where you have a new mode in
effect, and some (most?) tool-bar buttons make no sense.  Would you
like those buttons, or maybe the entire tool bar, to be removed now?

Similar situation exists when I have 2 windows, one of them showing
*scratch*, and switche between them -- would you like the tool bar to
disappear when I'm in *scratch*?

> However, that's probably technically difficult -- people have setups
> where they've computed the size of the Emacs windows based on whether
> (or not) they have toolbars enabled?  So switching the toolbars on/off
> dynamically may lead to some difficulties in that area?

That's another complication, but we could perhaps handle it in some
reasonable way.  Appearing and disappearing tool bar, OTOH, is
something we need to consider seriously before we decide that such a
mode of tool-bar display is sensible.