Re: A new filter-based customization interface

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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I looked at the image you sent.  I supposed it is supposed to be
self-explanatory, but as often happens for graphical interfaces, I
can't tell the meaning of what I see.


In order for a graphica interface to be natural and self-evident,
it should to be clear just by looking what each visual item means.
Is it an alternative you can select?
Is it a heading which describes the role of whatever follows?
Is it a command you can click on to control the interface?
These things are not clear to me.

Here are some of the visuak aspects for which the meaning is not clear to me.

* There is a bunch of lines at the top which start with
    Filter by
    1. categoryL 
    interfaceL modeline tookbar,..
    general: startup quit backup...

What do tese names mean?  Are they related to custom group names?
Some of them sare names of custom groups, but some are not.
What does each of these names mean?

* Is that an exhaustive list of all "categories"?
* If so, are you supposed to click on one to select it?
* Or are some categories someho selexted now, and this is a list of the
ones that are selected right now?

* How does the fact that a category is selected
affect what happens in the rest of this display?

The next thing it says is

  Sort by: package

What does that mean?  Is "package" one of several psople choices?  If
so, what are the other possible choices and how do you specify another choice?

Then it says

  Selected Customizations:

What does that expression "selected customizations" mean?  What
determines which customizations are selected?  How do you control
which ones are selected?  And what do you achieve by controlling that?

How does this relate to M-x customize...?
It looks like the names of these things do NOT match names of user options.

Each item and value seem to be followed by some sort of classification,
but what do they mean?  They do not seem to be custom groups.
Where are they defined?  For instance, two say :modeline:,  What does
that indicate?

What does [X] mean?  Does it mean "this is enabled"?
If so, what indicates "this is not enabled"?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)