Re: Menubar on text only terminals

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> writes:

> On 2007-04-02 16:56, Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> wrote:
>>>> With tmm, sub-menus have to be navigated through completions
>>>> lists, which some find inconvenient.  Toolbars don't have
>>>> that extra complexity.  I'm just trying to say that toolbars
>>>> and text terminals (with use of the mouse) are a more natural
>>>> fit.
>>> 
>>> That's kind of debatable.  Programs like the text-mode elinks
>>> web browser work quite nicely with a text mode menubar.  The
>>> menu bar of Emacs works in a different way than the elinks
>>> menu bar, but I don't see why this makes it less useful than
>>> the toolbar.
>> 
>> Maybe for the reason I just gave?
>
> That's where the 'debatable' part fits.  Some users may find it
> more useful to use completions to access the menu, rather than
> try to hit a particular menu entry with a mouse pointer.  Others
> may, obviously, disagree.
>
>> I'm not familiar with Elinks but if it works as well as you
>> say, perhaps, ATR it would a good idea to redesign Emacs text
>> mode menubar along the same lines.
>
> This is a good idea, IMHO.
>
> Maybe we can aim for making something like this available for
> Emacs 23, and make it also possible to switch between two 'modes'
> for accessing the menu.  The current completion-based mode, and
> something that resembles elinks :)

tmm is not really helpful in most cases since it requires refocusing
one's attention all the time.  It is possible that it may work better
with screen readers and/or Emacspeak, but I doubt it.  I think I
remember someone blind actually being using X11 since the screen
readers get along with it reasonably well.

I think that the MSDOS port has a more traditional text menu (which
closely resembles the graphical menus by appearing in-place).

It would probably be better to port that functionality to text
terminals in general before thinking about what to do with toolbars: I
don't think that many people consider tmm a good idea.  And it
certainly is a good hint that for MSDOS, one of the few console-only
parts, someone went to the pain to implement something else.

-- 
David Kastrup