minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Stefan Monnier]

In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an item
such as "Edit -> Search" is activated from the menu, I was just thinking
that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer, blinking
(or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in.

This way we don't need to implement dialog boxes for such text entry
(where the use of a dialog box is not nearly as important since
the keyboard has to be used anyway).


	Stefan

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Miles Bader]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@RUM.cs.yale.edu> writes:
> In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an item
> such as "Edit -> Search" is activated from the menu, I was just thinking
> that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer, blinking
> (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in.

How about dancing elephants?

-Miles

-- 
[|nurgle|]  ddt- demonic? so quake will have an evil kinda setting? one that 
            will  make every christian in the world foamm at the mouth? 
[iddt]      nurg, that's the goal 

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Kai Großjohann]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> "Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@RUM.cs.yale.edu> writes:
>> In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an item
>> such as "Edit -> Search" is activated from the menu, I was just thinking
>> that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer, blinking
>> (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in.
>
> How about dancing elephants?

They don't fit in my office.

kai
-- 
Silence is foo!

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Miles Bader]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:
> > How about dancing elephants?
> 
> They don't fit in my office.

Well once the elephants are done, your office will be much ... bigger.

-Miles

-- 
A zen-buddhist walked into a pizza shop and
said, "Make me one with everything."

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an item
> such as "Edit -> Search" is activated from the menu, I was just thinking
> that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer, blinking
> (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in.

Shouldn't some ingenious use of minibuffer-prompt-face be enough?

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Pavel Janík]

   From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>
   Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 19:23:49 +0300 (IDT)

   > > In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an item
   > > such as "Edit -> Search" is activated from the menu, I was just thinking
   > > that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer, blinking
   > > (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in.
   > 
   > Shouldn't some ingenious use of minibuffer-prompt-face be enough?

Some days ago I proposed changing the background color of the whole
minibuffer. Minibuffer-prompt-face is not enough I think. Prompt can be
short (like I-search:) and thus it is not enough to get user' attention.

Changing the background color of minibuffer will be similar to the effect
of mode-line-inactive face. Minibuffer will "stand up" from Emacs. Another
useful thing can be to change display engine to allow minibuffer at the top
of the Emacs frame...
-- 
Pavel Janík

panic("floppy: Port bolixed.");
                  -- 2.2.16 include/asm-sparc/floppy.h

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Pavel@Janik.cz (Pavel =?iso-8859-2?q?Jan=EDk?=)
> Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 10:34:36 +0200
> 
>    > Shouldn't some ingenious use of minibuffer-prompt-face be enough?
> 
> Some days ago I proposed changing the background color of the whole
> minibuffer. Minibuffer-prompt-face is not enough I think. Prompt can be
> short (like I-search:) and thus it is not enough to get user' attention.

Note the ``ingenious'' part: we could do something with the face that
it will draw the attention immediately.

> Changing the background color of minibuffer will be similar to the effect
> of mode-line-inactive face.

Won't a suitable definition of the minibuffer face have the same
effect?

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Miles Bader]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
> > Some days ago I proposed changing the background color of the whole
> > minibuffer. Minibuffer-prompt-face is not enough I think. Prompt can be
> > short (like I-search:) and thus it is not enough to get user' attention.
> 
> Note the ``ingenious'' part: we could do something with the face that
> it will draw the attention immediately.

I think the problem is that you have to do it without making the
minibuffer prompt so annoying that it's unpleasant to use -- and I
suspect it may be hard to draw attention to a small string at the bottom
of the screen _without_ being annoying.

Doing something like drawing a bold box around the whole minibuffer
window, on the other hand, would be much more noticable, because (1) it
would cover a much wider area, typically, and (2) because the change
wouldn't be part of the minibuffer text, you could use a more noticable
effect without drawing attention away from the user's entered text
(which, remember, was a problem with using things like `bold' for the
minibuffer prompt face).

-Miles
-- 
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.  -- Pogo

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Richard Stallman]

    Some days ago I proposed changing the background color of the whole
    minibuffer.

Do you mean changing the background of the whole empty line?
That might be rather strong.  But we could show it to some
users and see what they think of it.

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Pavel Janík]

   From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
   Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 14:02:09 -0600 (MDT)

   >     Some days ago I proposed changing the background color of the
   >     whole minibuffer.
   > 
   > Do you mean changing the background of the whole empty line?  That
   > might be rather strong.  But we could show it to some users and see
   > what they think of it.

Any volunteer to do that? I can than show that to some novice users.
-- 
Pavel Janík

/*
 *   Should be panic but... (Why are BSD people panic obsessed ??)
 */
                  -- 2.0.38 net/ipv4/ip_fw.c

Re: minibuffer vs dialog-boxes

[Richard Stallman]

    In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an item
    such as "Edit -> Search" is activated from the menu, I was just thinking
    that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer, blinking
    (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in.

It might be good.  Or there could be a rectangle that starts out
where the menu was and moves very fast over to the minibuffer.
That might be a nice way to get the message across.