Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date)

[Terje Bless <link@pobox.com>]

Brady Montz <bradym@balestra.org> wrote:

>3. we have a nice set of tools for managing which files/buffers you
>have open and how to switch between them: ibuffer, iswitchb, various
>things like desktop.el, speedbar, buffer-menu, ...

I've been using XEmacs for programming since the early nineties. I _still_
have no clue how to switch between buffers from the keyboard! I keep going
to the Buffers menu and selecting the one I want. In my "other editor" --
BBEdit on Mac OS X; solidly planted in GUI land -- I /can/ switch between
buffers from the keyboard.

Odd that, considering how "keyboard-oriented" XEmacs is, and how "GUI
oriented" BBEdit is...


And speaking of which, the thing that confused me most over the years was
the terminology. A "buffer" is a "document" and a "frame" is a "window"?
Why do I have to choose "New Frame" when what I /really/ want is a new
window? And I don't work with "buffers"; I work with "files" or
"documents". "Buffers" are something hardware /has/ or that I implement in
code, it's not something I work with day-to-day.


I think "fixing" these things would go a long way towards making XEmacs
more friendly to that great majority of people who do /not/ spend their
entire lives inside (X)Emacs. Then again, they might utterly break it for
those that do... :-)


-- 
By definition there is __no_way__ any problem can be my fault.  Any problems
you think you can find in my code are all in your imagination. If you continue
with such derranged imaginings then I may be forced to perform corrective
brain surgery... with an axe.                              -- Stephen Harris