From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: ams@kemisten.nu (Alfred M. Szmidt) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: 21 Apr 2002 13:25:01 +0200 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <7263-Sat20Apr2002145929+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il> <3CC1BEB9.9020104@cs.berkeley.edu> <87elhap2r4.fsf@lgh163a.kemisten.nu> <3CC231D2.6020709@cs.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019388446 16759 127.0.0.1 (21 Apr 2002 11:27:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 11:27:26 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Eli Zaretskii , 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 16zFV8-0004MC-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 13:27:26 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16zFVJ-00046N-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 13:27:38 +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 16zFUx-0007MK-00; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 07:27:15 -0400 Original-Received: from lgh163a.kemisten.nu ([212.32.172.173]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zFT1-0007In-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 07:25:15 -0400 Original-Received: from ams by lgh163a.kemisten.nu with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 16zFSn-0001Rc-00; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 13:25:01 +0200 Original-To: Michael Toomim In-Reply-To: <3CC231D2.6020709@cs.berkeley.edu> Original-Lines: 27 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2.50 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:2923 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:2923 * Michael Toomim writes: > There's a thing called "user-centered design". In modern times, it > is generally accepted to be good. Maybe you should call it "new user-centred design"? Because it surely doesn't make any sense on changing the name of such a basic concept like "buffer" to "document" or "file" when you are already familiar with Emacs. The whole terminology is so hard coded into Emacs that it would be a pitta to change, and would cause more harm than good. Think of all the old time users, they would still call buffers for buffers, and new users would ask what a buffer is. Maybe the entry in the Emacs manual (Glossary) should be fixed to describe what a buffer is so that it makes more sense to a user, but changing it to something totally different? No. That would be like rewriting Emacs. Buffer The buffer is the basic editing unit; one buffer corresponds to one text being edited. You can have several buffers, but at any time you are editing only one, the `current buffer,' though several can be visible when you are using multiple windows (q.v.). Most buffers are visiting (q.v.) some file. *Note Buffers::. Personally, I think it is pretty clear, do you have any ideas on how one could improve this? -- Alfred M. Szmidt