VC menu ?

VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item in an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?

I just discovered that the command John Wiegley suggested to use in an answer to a recent query of mine was *right under my nose* in the Tools/Version Control menu. If the VC menu had been next to Tool (just like other mode menus are) I would have probably tried a few commands there before asking...

Jean-Christophe 

Re: VC menu ?

[Mark Oteiza]

Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> writes:

> Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item in an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?
>
> I just discovered that the command John Wiegley suggested to use in an
> answer to a recent query of mine was *right under my nose* in the
> Tools/Version Control menu. If the VC menu had been next to Tool (just
> like other mode menus are) I would have probably tried a few commands
> there before asking...

Yes, and let's further add top-level menu items for every other
important tool in Emacs workflows.  That way, the menu shows every
useful thing at once, and is simultaneously cumbersome to the point of
unusability.

Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.

Re: VC menu ?

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Thu, Jul 6, 2017, 7:27 AM Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote:

>
> Yes, and let's further add top-level menu items for every other
> important tool in Emacs workflows.  That way, the menu shows every
> useful thing at once, and is simultaneously cumbersome to the point of
> unusability.
>
> Sarcasm aside,


:)

The menu (including the nested menus) is just a tip of the iceberg. You
cannot possibly fit everything in menus.

You might find it useful to learn other command discovery tools like
apropos or completion systems like Ido and Ivy/Counsel (Elpa) that show you
commands that match your minibuffer input interactively. For instance,
searching for "vc-" shows me all the commands containing that string when
using Ivy/Counsel.

if

 you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.

-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 6, 2017, at 20:27, Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote:
> 
> Yes, and let's further add top-level menu items for every other
> important tool in Emacs workflows.

Like what ? I checked the Tools menu and besides for VC I could not find anything as important as *version control* there. Plus, considering that every major mode puts its menu there, it would be very welcome to have VC automatically at the top level when working on vc-ed files. Maybe *that* had escaped your logic.

>  That way, the menu shows every useful thing at once, and is simultaneously cumbersome to the point of unusability.

Except that it's not what I suggested.

> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.

Oh, and *that* is not sarcasm.

Jean-Christophe

Re: VC menu ?

[Andreas Schwab]

On Jul 06 2017, Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> wrote:

> Like what ? I checked the Tools menu and besides for VC I could not find anything as important as *version control* there. Plus, considering that every major mode puts its menu there, it would be very welcome to have VC automatically at the top level when working on vc-ed files. Maybe *that* had escaped your logic.

VC isn't a major mode.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 6, 2017, at 21:20, Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> wrote:
> 
> On Jul 06 2017, Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Like what ? I checked the Tools menu and besides for VC I could not find anything as important as *version control* there. Plus, considering that every major mode puts its menu there, it would be very welcome to have VC automatically at the top level when working on vc-ed files. Maybe *that* had escaped your logic.
> 
> VC isn't a major mode.

:) I know VC is not a major mode. And I know that I don't have any VC-related major mode on my git files, so I would appreciate that VC is put somewhere prominent when I work on vc-ed files, or anytime for that matter.

Now, of course, I can do that with configurations etc. But we're arguing here that the VC menu is equivalent to the Games menu, or to the Directory Server menu... That's seems very silly to me.

Jean-Christophe 

Re: VC menu ?

[Tino Calancha]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> But we're arguing here that the VC menu is equivalent to the Games menu, or to the Directory Server menu... That's seems very silly to me.
I just noticed that 'Doctor' is not included in Games.  Maybe is not
considered a game? Some kind of medicine instead?

Re: VC menu ?

[Stephen Berman]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 21:41:03 +0900 (JST) Tino Calancha <tino.calancha@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Jul 2017, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>
>> But we're arguing here that the VC menu is equivalent to the Games menu, or
>> to the Directory Server menu... That's seems very silly to me.
> I just noticed that 'Doctor' is not included in Games.  Maybe is not
> considered a game? Some kind of medicine instead?

What do doctors do?  They help you, of course.  So that's the menu to
look in. ;-)

Steve Berman

Re: VC menu ?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 15:51:46 +0900 Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> wrote: 

JH> Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item in
JH> an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?

JH> I just discovered that the command John Wiegley suggested to use in an answer to
JH> a recent query of mine was *right under my nose* in the Tools/Version Control
JH> menu. If the VC menu had been next to Tool (just like other mode menus are) I
JH> would have probably tried a few commands there before asking...

15 or even 10 years ago, I think VC was not a first-class menubar citizen.

Today, I think it should be, it's truly essential. Plus it's a very
short menubar entry, just two characters.

Ted

Re: VC menu ?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote: 

MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.

I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
experience. We should not expect users to be diligent readers[1].

Ted

[1] as previously posted:

Rule #1 of writing manuals: They Won't Read It. 

...followed by rule #2: They Still Won't Read It. 

...and then rule #3: They'll Complain About It. 

...then David Kastrup suggested I forgot rule #4: To Justify not Reading It. 

Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 6, 2017, at 23:01, Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote: 
> 
> MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
> MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.
> 
> I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
> experience. We should not expect users to be diligent readers[1].

Indeed. My original question was a git question and John replied with a vc answer, which was of course the best possible answer but I had git in mind and would not have thought of checking for vc features (especially since it has been repeated here that native git support in emacs was not complete, or something like that).

So it is not really an issue that features are discoverable or not, or documented or not, it is about knowing what you are looking for in the first place. If the VC menu had been right there, I would have probably tested "Compare with base version" or "Show other version" and would have *discovered* that feature, and then would have I checked the manual to see what it actually does and what the other vc functions do, but only after seeing that VC functions work good enough for git issues.

Jean-Christophe 

> Ted
> 
> [1] as previously posted:
> 
> Rule #1 of writing manuals: They Won't Read It. 

No, it's "They don't know where to start, and it's 643 pages, so it's always for when one has the time, which is not often."

Re: VC menu ?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item
> in an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?

left-click on the "Git:master" thingy in the mode-line,


        Stefan

Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 6, 2017, at 23:35, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item
>> in an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?
> 
> left-click on the "Git:master" thingy in the mode-line,

Except when you work in a terminal. Besides, why would I even think of doing that ?

It's trivial *a posteriori* to provide "obvious" solutions, except that if such solutions were really obvious, there would not be a problem in the first place. Discoverability is a solution when you know what you are looking for. Otherwise it's "exploration" and it's a totally different thing.

Jean-Christophe 

Re: VC menu ?

[Stefan Monnier]

> It's trivial *a posteriori* to provide "obvious" solutions, except that if
> such solutions were really obvious, there would not be a problem in the
> first place.  Discoverability is a solution when you know what you are
> looking for.  Otherwise it's "exploration" and it's a totally
> different thing.

The problem is simply that the menu-bar tends to be already very
crowded.  This obviously depends also on the width of your frames as
well as the ratio between the font-size used in the menu compared to
that of the text area.

I removed the "Buffers" menu in my config a very long time ago, since
otherwise many/most frames end up with a menu-bar that doesn't fit.


        Stefan

Re: VC menu ?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2017 15:51:46 +0900
> 
> Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item in an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?

We are trying not to put too many items on the top-level menu, since
various modes add their own items.  For example, Dired adds 5 items.

As for discoverability: Emacs is so large that it's entirely
impossible to show all of its important features in the menus.  We are
lucky we have found the current arrangement, which shows many of them,
albeit not at top level.

Re: VC menu ?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 10:35:48 -0400 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 

>> Why is the VC menu hidden in the Tool menu when it's such an important item
>> in an emacs workflow? Couldn't we have VC as a standard base menu?

SM> left-click on the "Git:master" thingy in the mode-line,

Maybe that should look more like a button or a menu? Right now mode-line
"clickability" can only be discovered by hovering over the element and
reading tooltips.

Ted

Re: VC menu ?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> 15 or even 10 years ago, I think VC was not a first-class menubar citizen.
>
> Today, I think it should be, it's truly essential. Plus it's a very
> short menubar entry, just two characters.

+1 to this and to the other message from Ted.

Re: VC menu ?

[Mark Oteiza]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote: 
> MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
> MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.
>
> I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
> experience.

I agree.  It's but one of many useful self-documenting facilities in
Emacs.  Unfortunately the original poster thinks the others are silly and
that the menu should spoon feed.

Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 7, 2017, at 9:50, Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote: 
>> MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
>> MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.
>> 
>> I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
>> experience.
> 
> I agree.  It's but one of many useful self-documenting facilities in
> Emacs.  Unfortunately the original poster thinks the others are silly and
> that the menu should spoon feed.

Not all the "others". I think your sarcasm is not smart and not relevant to the discussion, I also think (and I wrote) that it *is* silly to consider equivalent the VC menu and the Games and some other menus in the context of a development text editor where version control is a core feature. I also consider not useful the a posteriori exemples of "discoverability" that pop up every time there is a question similar to the one I asked. Discoverability should not be confused with exploration.

I do understand Eli's considerations about screen real estate though, even if I think with Ted and Oscar that VC should be considered a special citizen of the top menu. Now, if you have anything of interest to add to the discussion please do, otherwise I don't see much point going on.

Jean-Christophe

Re: VC menu ?

[Homeros Misasa]

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How about to organize popup-menu? Popup-menu does not concern width.  I
list my
special citizen (VC, iMenu, Buffer, Frame, Bookmark, and Recenf) in
popup-menu
via right click.  Problem is, more work, members are getting closer to menu
bar.

On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 11:26 AM, Jean-Christophe Helary <
jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> > On Jul 7, 2017, at 9:50, Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> >> On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu>
> wrote:
> >> MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
> >> MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware
> of VC.
> >>
> >> I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
> >> experience.
> >
> > I agree.  It's but one of many useful self-documenting facilities in
> > Emacs.  Unfortunately the original poster thinks the others are silly and
> > that the menu should spoon feed.
>
> Not all the "others". I think your sarcasm is not smart and not relevant
> to the discussion, I also think (and I wrote) that it *is* silly to
> consider equivalent the VC menu and the Games and some other menus in the
> context of a development text editor where version control is a core
> feature. I also consider not useful the a posteriori exemples of
> "discoverability" that pop up every time there is a question similar to the
> one I asked. Discoverability should not be confused with exploration.
>
> I do understand Eli's considerations about screen real estate though, even
> if I think with Ted and Oscar that VC should be considered a special
> citizen of the top menu. Now, if you have anything of interest to add to
> the discussion please do, otherwise I don't see much point going on.
>
> Jean-Christophe
>

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Re: VC menu ?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 20:50:24 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote: 

MO> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote: 
MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.
>> 
>> I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
>> experience.

MO> I agree.  It's but one of many useful self-documenting facilities in
MO> Emacs.  Unfortunately the original poster thinks the others are silly and
MO> that the menu should spoon feed.

That's not the impression I got, and would prefer to talk about the
proposal rather than people's thoughts. Also, I think many of our
discussions here tend to see Emacs users as experts with 10+ years of
experience (survivor bias).

Anyhow, my position is that the VC menu is as essential today as the
Recent and Buffers menus and should be at the top.

As a compromise, maybe we can show VC by default, but also have an
option in the VC menu to "Don't show VC menu at top, put it under
Tools." That way annoyed users can move it out easily.

Ted

Re: VC menu ?

[Tino Calancha]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017, Stephen Berman wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 21:41:03 +0900 (JST) Tino Calancha <tino.calancha@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 6 Jul 2017, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>>
>>> But we're arguing here that the VC menu is equivalent to the Games menu, or
>>> to the Directory Server menu... That's seems very silly to me.
>> I just noticed that 'Doctor' is not included in Games.  Maybe is not
>> considered a game? Some kind of medicine instead?
>
> What do doctors do?  They help you, of course.  So that's the menu to
> look in. ;-)
Your are right, thanks!
Not sure if he helped me, though.  He said:
"Please, get your mind out of the gutter."
DUNNO what he meant...

RE: VC menu ?

[Drew Adams]

> my position is that the VC menu is as essential today as the
> Recent and Buffers menus and should be at the top.

There is no Recent menu at the top.  Not by default, at least.

Re: VC menu ?

[Tino Calancha]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

> On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:27:12 -0400 Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu> wrote:
>
> MO> Sarcasm aside, if you had ever flipped through the Emacs manual or
> MO> scrolled through a list of keybindings, you would have been aware of VC.
>
> I think menu-driven UI discovery is fun and an essential part of the GUI
> experience. We should not expect users to be diligent readers[1].
IMO, Emacs newcommer's suggestions on the menu are an important input.

I must admit that i have the following in my config file...:
(when (fboundp 'menu-bar-mode) (menu-bar-mode -1))

... So please take my opinion on this topic with a grain of salt.

Certainly, as Kaushal Modi, i use completion (Icicles) to explore the
Emacs commands.  That said, the menu is a valuable source of 
discoverability source as well.

I must agree with Jean-Christophe that VC might occupy a more prominent
place than games.  I bet most of Emacs users are more interested in VC 
than in the games.
PD: I also would like thanks Jean for open interesting threads causing 
many debate.

Re: VC menu ?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 7 Jul 2017 06:22:05 -0700 (PDT) Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote: 

>> my position is that the VC menu is as essential today as the
>> Recent and Buffers menus and should be at the top.

DA> There is no Recent menu at the top.  Not by default, at least.

Good point, thanks!

Ted

Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On Jul 7, 2017, at 0:23, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> We are trying not to put too many items on the top-level menu, since
> various modes add their own items.  For example, Dired adds 5 items.

I saw that. Wow. Maybe modes should be limited in the number of menu slots they use...

Re. VC vs dired, I guess VC would not be in the top menu when Emacs is in Dired mode (is there a used for vc-ing a directory buffer ?)

And really, Dired should use a master menu item and put all it's stuff there. Here is for the "discoverability" proponents ;) 

Jean-Christophe 


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Re: VC menu ?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2017 10:25:56 +0900
> 
>  We are trying not to put too many items on the top-level menu, since
>  various modes add their own items. For example, Dired adds 5 items.
> 
> I saw that. Wow. Maybe modes should be limited in the number of menu slots they use...

I see no reason for a one-fits-all restriction.  Of course, every
specific case should be judged on its own.  In this case, we should
ask heavy users of Dired whether they need all of those on the top
level, and see what they respond.

> Re. VC vs dired, I guess VC would not be in the top menu when Emacs is in Dired mode (is there a used for
> vc-ing a directory buffer ?)

I'm actually unconvinced VC warrants its own top-level menu item.
AFAIR, it's in "Tools" in every IDE I ever saw, so Emacs is not the
odd one out here.  Also, why should that be more important than, say,
"Compile" or "Shell command" or "Compare"?  That this particular
community is a heavy user of some VCS doesn't yet mean we should skew
Emacs to our specific needs, especially since most of us hardly ever
use the menus anyway.

> And really, Dired should use a master menu item and put all it's stuff there.

I think this would make that master item very long and deeply nested.

Re: VC menu ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 8, 2017, at 16:04, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm actually unconvinced VC warrants its own top-level menu item.
> AFAIR, it's in "Tools" in every IDE I ever saw, so Emacs is not the
> odd one out here.

I don't write prose in other IDEs, I don't do most of the things I do in other IDEs, or simple text editors for that matter. Besides, most "writing environment" don't have strong version control commands at all and you have to use the external commands to access them (macOS provides very simple vc on a file basis where you can choose to "go back in time", but that works only with some applications).

In the Magit thread you just hinted how vc commands were important. I don't think I'll ever need Magit for anything I need to do here (and I found John Wiegley's bottom-up introduction to be the best thing I ever read about git) and having a visual reminder of things I can do readily available is very important to me as a non-expert user of git/vcs/emacs, etc.

>  Also, why should that be more important than, say,
> "Compile" or "Shell command" or "Compare"?

"Compile" is a single command.
"Shell command" too is a single command.
There are no top menu slots for single commands at the moment, so they don't compare.

I can't say anything about "Compare".

>  That this particular
> community is a heavy user of some VCS doesn't yet mean we should skew
> Emacs to our specific needs, especially since most of us hardly ever
> use the menus anyway.

I think you may be missing the point. Version controlling is not something that is useful only to (expert) code writers. It is useful to (and really should be used for) any kind of writing, and visual aids are especially useful to beginners and non-(or casual) code writer.

For me, the VC menu would rather compare to the Buffer menu. It is equally useful because they are both visual aids for concepts that the beginner is not familiar with and after a while they can be ignored when the user has practiced the commands enough.

I guess it is just a configuration away to move VC around, but I'd rather have it at the top by default (and move it some place else later eventually, when I know how to configure the thing, ie. when I've become an "expert").

Now, if you tell me how to move VC to the top, I'll do that for my machine and will stop arguing :)

Jean-Christophe

Re: VC menu ?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2017 07:59:39 +0900
> 
> Now, if you tell me how to move VC to the top, I'll do that for my machine and will stop arguing :)

It's all in menu-bar.el, I think the code is quite self-explanatory.