Re: toolbar conventions

[Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>]

Richard M. Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>     By the way, I checked both the O'Reilly style guide and the Microsoft
>     style guide and both agreed on "menu bar" and "toolbar." Given that
>     technical terms go from two words, to a hyphenated form, to a single
>     word, it's likely that's what we're seeing here.
> 
> Menu bars are older than tool bars, so if it were simply a natural
> progression, it is peculiar that it has proceeded faster for
> tool bars than for menu bars.

Interesting observation.

>     Given that, should we be using "toolbar" in both text and code in
>     anticipation of a future renaming of tool-bar to toolbar?
> 
> I tend to think we should treat the two alike.

I think I'd agree. So do we go with "menubar" and "toolbar" in the
future, or "menu bar" and "tool bar"? Given the following stats, and
because we have menu-bar.el and tool-bar.el already, I'd say the inertia
clearly indicates that "menu bar" and "tool bar" would be the desired
choices for Emacs.

I can add a Style Guide subheading to (elisp)Coding Conventions and
(elisp)Documentation Tips and include this information if you like.

    [wohler@olgas:586]$ grep -ri menubar --exclude \*.elc * --exclude ChangeLog\* --exclude loaddefs.el --exclude ldefs-boot.el| wc
	241    2060   23519
    [wohler@olgas:587]$ grep -ri menu.bar --exclude \*.elc * --exclude ChangeLog\* --exclude loaddefs.el --exclude ldefs-boot.el| wc
       1523    8660  109482
    [wohler@olgas:588]$ grep -ri toolbar --exclude \*.elc * --exclude ChangeLog\* --exclude loaddefs.el --exclude ldefs-boot.el| wc
	330    2245   30068
    [wohler@olgas:589]$ grep -ri tool.bar --exclude \*.elc * --exclude ChangeLog\* --exclude loaddefs.el --exclude ldefs-boot.el| wc
	400    2048   26282

>                                                 But there is no rush
> to change this; let's leave it alone, for now.

Agree, but new code should use "menu bar" and "tool bar."

How about speedbar though?

> Does anyone have any ideas on the issue of how to use the term
> "option"?  That issue is more important--it is not just an issue of
> punctuation, it is inconsistent use of a word.  Would someone like to
> study the situation and find out which uses occur where?

I don't recall this thread. What was the subject?

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
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