From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai =?iso-8859-1?q?Gro=DFjohann?=) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:34:36 +0200 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <87n0vw2y0v.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87it6iwqdi.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019568999 3947 127.0.0.1 (23 Apr 2002 13:36:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 13:36:39 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Terje Bless , 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 1700TH-00011Y-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:36:39 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 1700UU-0004Lk-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:37:54 +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 1700Su-0004aP-00; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:36:16 -0400 Original-Received: from waldorf.cs.uni-dortmund.de ([129.217.4.42]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 1700RS-0004W5-00 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:34:47 -0400 Original-Received: from lothlorien.cs.uni-dortmund.de (lothlorien [129.217.19.67]) by waldorf.cs.uni-dortmund.de with ESMTP id g3NDYgb11775; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:34:42 +0200 (MES) Original-Received: from lucy.cs.uni-dortmund.de (lucy [129.217.19.80]) by lothlorien.cs.uni-dortmund.de id PAA04852; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:34:36 +0200 (MET DST) Original-Received: by lucy.cs.uni-dortmund.de (Postfix, from userid 6104) id 383923AC60; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:34:36 +0200 (CEST) Original-To: "Stephen J. Turnbull" In-Reply-To: <87it6iwqdi.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> ("Stephen J. Turnbull"'s message of "23 Apr 2002 21:28:41 +0900") Original-Lines: 38 User-Agent: Gnus/5.090006 (Oort Gnus v0.06) Emacs/21.2.50 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) 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:3107 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:3107 "Stephen J. Turnbull" writes: > Be that as it may, Eli is clearly arguing that the benefits to > learning more about Emacs IHHO greatly outweigh the barriers, enough > so that he's willing to contest Terje's (thought-out) opinion. > Furthermore, Eli implies that the cost of reducing the barriers is > quite high (elsewhere in the thread). There might be some misunderstandings here. My reading of the whole thing: Terje: I just want to use a few Emacs features. I don't want to become an Emacs expert just to use these few features. Eli: It's worth it to learn more Emacs features. It appears that one is not an answer to the other. Also, these two statements don't contradict each other. It should be very simple in Emacs to do simple things, such as opening a file and moving the cursor and inserting some characters and saving the file. If something "simple" is not simple to do, that's a bug and should be fixed. For example, I believe that completion is a really great thing but that file selector boxes would be helpful for the casual user, so they should be added in Emacs=B9; requiring casual users to learn about the minibuffer prompt and TAB is not a good idea, IMVHO. Of course, the challenge is to get a file selector box which allows all the nifty completion things, too. As that might be difficult, one could offer traditional C-x C-f behavior in addition to the file selector box. kai =B9 I use "Emacs" to mean both flavors in the whole message, except here. File selector boxes are already present in XEmacs. --=20 Silence is foo!