From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Eli Zaretskii" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:53:52 +0300 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019415444 11521 127.0.0.1 (21 Apr 2002 18:57:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 18:57:24 +0000 (UTC) Cc: hniksic@arsdigita.com, jas@extundo.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 16zMWa-0002zi-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 20:57:24 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16zMWv-0005ff-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 20:57:45 +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 16zMWN-00076t-00; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 14:57:11 -0400 Original-Received: from odin.inter.net.il ([192.114.186.10]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zMTf-00070C-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 14:54:23 -0400 Original-Received: from zaretsky ([80.230.2.40]) by odin.inter.net.il (Mirapoint Messaging Server MOS 2.9.3.2) with ESMTP id ABM93240; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:53:48 +0300 (IDT) Original-To: link@pobox.com X-Mailer: emacs 21.2.50 (via feedmail 8 I) and Blat ver 1.8.9 In-Reply-To: (message from Terje Bless on Sun, 21 Apr 2002 17:29:27 +0200) 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:2954 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:2954 > Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 17:29:27 +0200 > From: Terje Bless > > >>The perfect feature needs no documentation because it's intuitively > >>obvious how it works. > > > >This is only true for very simple features. Powerful and flexible > >features are normally complicated enough to require some documentation, > >without which they are less useful than they could have been. > > I disagree. This is IMO true of any feature, it just isn't possible to > achieve in practice for more then a very small fraction of features. Since I'm not interested in theretical possibilities that cannot be realized in practice, it sounds like we agree ;-) > My > complaint here is that the Emacsen do not go far /enough/ in the direction > of perfection and settle too easily. Without specific examples (which you already declined to provide), this complaint isn't useful, since we agree in principle that we should try to avoid trading simplicity for power as much as possible. > >Simplicity and power do contradict to > >some degree. I agree with the general tendency to not trade power for > >simplicity, but in practice, beyond a certain level, power comes at the > >expense of simplicity. That's why other editors praised for their > >simplicity are much less powerful than Emacs. > > Ok, then we disagree here. Perhaps I'm just hopelessly optimistic, but I > really do think it's possible to make Emacs easier to use without > compromizing it's power, at least not unduly. I don't think it's a question of optimism. I think it's a question of experience.