Re: Infrastructural complexity.

[Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>]

On Sun, 2009-07-19 at 23:57 +0300, Juri Linkov wrote:

> One of the main questions is where and how to attach these
> virtual input devices.  It is still unclear how to attach
> a tab bar (a useful virtual input device still unsupported
> by Emacs unlike tool bars and menu bars) to the Emacs frame.
> Last year Jan looked how to do this in GTK and concluded
> this is not straightforward.  Maybe newer GTK versions provide
> an easier way.


There is no good reason or need to use GTK's "native"
tab bars.

As you note: tab bars are a simple enough graphical presentation
that they  can be implemented using plain text, given just 
some suitable "symbol fonts".   Emacs could have tab bars that
work the same and look very similar across all graphical 
toolkits and on ordinary text terminals.   They won't look
like "native" tab bars to the fans of any particular GUI
toolkit but, with care in providing a custom symbol font, 
they can look quite nice.


> > 2) We don't have to slavishly follow Eclipse or another
> > program to determine our list of virtual input devices.
> > When we pick virtual input device types and their behavior,
> > whenever possible, virtual input devices that make some sense
> > on plain-text smart terminals are extra nifty to have.

> We could implement tab bars on plain-text terminals exactly as
> a menu bar line is implemented at the top on the terminal window.

Yes.



> > Given Emacs' huge command set, I'd really like to see a
> > virtual input device that resembled, say, the command menu
> > system of old PC programs like Lotus whatsit or any of the
> > spreadsheet programs.   This also resembles the command
> > menu interfaces of some HP calculators, as I recall.  Basically,
> > a narrow area for listing a thin menu of commands but with a 
> > "tree structure" so you can dig down to sub-commands or pop 
> > back up to parent menus.   With a "home" or "clear" command for
> > getting back to the root of the command tree.
> 
> Yes, I remember that in Lotus 1-2-3 the slash key activated
> a keyboard-driven menu.  Since in Emacs keymaps and menus
> have the same structure it is easy to do the same in Emacs.

Yup.

I like the idea of making these command menus generate
a new kind of event like [CMD-MENU FIND-FILE].  Maybe 
there can be special rules for how to fall back in case
there is no CMD-MENU binding.

-t