From: Benjamin Riefenstahl <b.riefenstahl@turtle-trading.net>
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: NeXTStep port preferences
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:18:59 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <m2zloe6s0s.fsf@sueton.benny.turtle-trading.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <loom.20080717T170654-350@post.gmane.org> (Adrian Robert's message of "Thu\, 17 Jul 2008 17\:32\:13 +0000 \(UTC\)")
Hi David, Adrian,
I have been trying to work with that dialog some and have been mostly
frustrated. Some thoughts:
- Quick access to the options for default font and modifier keys are
usefull for first installation and probably for newbies.
- The options to change the cursor are probably not important enough
to have here. [If I understand this right, there are new NextStep
specific cursor drawing routines in the port. This is not good, I
think. If the portable cursor routines are deficient they should be
updated for all platforms. I may be missing something here.]
- That the dialog stores its stuff in the defaults database is a good
feature, because defaults are read before ".emacs" and so this is a
good place for the font setting.
- I am missing the "Emacs.geometry" option in the defaults database.
For me "Emacs.font" and "Emacs.geometry" are the two options that I
need in the defaults database, everything else is better in
".emacs".
- The font setting mechanism doesn't work unless an Emacs frame is
selected. This used to be documented in the readme, but it is still
a bug.
- The callbacks that the Cocoa dialogs call are not protected in a
catch block. If they run into an error, Emacs aborts without a
visible error message.
I think that the "Preferences..." menu should start a customization
buffer, like it does in the Carbon port. This can start with the root
of the customize hierarchy or it can be a "New Installation" group
with the most important options, if somebody wants to create such a
group. If customize does not support having buttons to show the font
and color dialogs, that can be added to customize.
Adrian Robert writes:
> It is also not something easy to maintain outside of GNU Emacs
> itself (e.g. in a distribution like Aquamacs)
It is not easy to be maintained anywhere. As you notice, it is broken
even now, and only part of that is bit-rot.
> However, some concessions to platform convention and user
> convenience ought to be tolerated on a case-bycase basis depending
> on the user-benefit to obtrusiveness ratio.
I don't think that a buggy and old-fashioned looking dialog (IMO) is
really an asset for anybody, certainly not Mac users.
> Otherwise, at least in this case, there's no real reason not to just
> use the X11 version on OS X
The inconvenience of having to start X11 to edit files or to read mail
and probably missing features (e.g. does DnD work from Finder to
Emacs?).
benny
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-07-19 11:18 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2008-07-16 5:36 NeXTStep port preferences David Reitter
2008-07-17 17:32 ` Adrian Robert
2008-07-19 11:18 ` Benjamin Riefenstahl [this message]
2008-07-20 15:05 ` Adrian Robert
2008-07-20 16:53 ` Benjamin Riefenstahl
2008-07-21 15:04 ` Justin Bogner
2008-07-19 15:59 ` David Reitter
2008-07-19 16:01 ` David Reitter
2008-07-19 16:21 ` Adrian Robert
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