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

[Terje Bless <link@pobox.com>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

>"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
>>As for buffers, I disagree that it's unused in the context used by
>>Emacs.  I've seen several editors that do the same.
>
>And anyway, buffers are _not_ the same as `files' or `documents', and
>indeed, the name quite accurately describes what it does (and
>corresponds directly to the concept of a buffer you say you're used to
>doing OS work).  Sometimes there's a one-to-one correspondence between
>buffers and files, but quite often there's not.  Once a user learns
>about this, he can use this advantage.

This is beside the point I was making.

I don't think about putting a file into a buffer so I can edit it and then
write the buffer back to disk. I think about editing a file. Going through
the translation from how I think about this task and how it happens to be
implemented is an extra burden for me.

In point of fact I _don't_ mind the use of "buffer" in (X)Emacs. Partially
it's not relevant (for non-file buffers) and partly I'm used to it. It's
also a rather small issue. The reason I brought it up is because this way
of _thinking_ about it is, in my opinion, important. And not just for
Windows people or novices, but for more experienced people as well. Not
everyone can be an expert at everything; those that aren't expert (merely
competent) with Emacs would benefit greatly from any improvement in it's
human interaction. In fact, just about the only group of people who would
benefit little or not at all from it are those that are experts at Emacs.




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