From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Michael Toomim Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 12:17:13 -0700 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <7263-Sat20Apr2002145929+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019330328 32555 127.0.0.1 (20 Apr 2002 19:18:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 19:18:48 +0000 (UTC) Cc: link@pobox.com, bradym@balestra.org, xemacs-design@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16z0Nk-0008Sy-00 for ; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 21:18:48 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16z0hi-00066q-00 for ; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 21:39:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16z0NC-0008Le-00; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 15:18:14 -0400 Original-Received: from front2.mail.megapathdsl.net ([66.80.60.30]) by fencepost.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16z0MB-0008Jw-00 for ; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 15:17:11 -0400 Original-Received: from [216.36.77.18] (HELO cheeseskin) by front2.mail.megapathdsl.net (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.5.8) with ESMTP id 27214357; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 12:11:13 -0700 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=cs.berkeley.edu ident=toomim) by cheeseskin with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 16z0MD-0000J9-00; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 12:17:13 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020412 Debian/0.9.9-6 X-Accept-Language: en Original-To: Eli Zaretskii Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:2872 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:2872 Eli Zaretskii wrote: >>From: Terje Bless >>Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 13:03:10 +0200 >>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. > > > There's a Glossary in the manual to ease the culture shock. I think > we should advertise the glossary more, and perhaps make it more > accessible by providing special links to it from doc strings etc. > > I don't think it's reasonable to expect Emacs to change its > terminology because most of it predates the one you are accustomed to. > For example, Emacs was talking about windows when glass teletype > displays were the only ones in existence. > > As for buffers, I disagree that it's unused in the context used by > Emacs. I've seen several editors that do the same. > I agree with Terje on this. If XEmacs is to be designed to be more easily usable by newbies, the terminology should change along with the interface. I don't understand your point that "the term window used to mean something else"... I mean, if we're going to ignore the new terminology, why don't we just call programs 'punch cards', because that's what they used to be? Changing the terminology would help new users, and I think that old users would be able to get used to the changes pretty quickly, since they'd all be pretty intuitive (assuming they're just being updated to the terms commonly used today).