Re: "Adobe Brackets like" editing in emacs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 02:23:55 -0400
> 
> EZ> I don't get it: switching between adjacent windows is a single
> EZ> keystroke away (bind it to a key, if you are annoyed by "C-x o").
> 
> I have, but looking in *two* places is a kind of context switch and
> clutters the display with more windows.

How is another window different from having contents of another file
inserted into the same window?  The only difference is the mode line
between them -- is that really such a big deal?

> I also use `last-buffer' a lot, but that's also a context switch.

Nothing a simple minor mode couldn't handle.

> EZ> Sounds over-engineering to me.  At the very least, I would suggest a
> EZ> fully-functional prototype that uses adjacent windows, before we
> EZ> decide if some other UI feature is needed.
> 
> You're asking for a fully-functional prototype of an alternative UI
> because a possible UI sounds like overengineering to you after a brief
> discussion?

I didn't ask for anything.  I suggested to have this feature first
based on the existing infrastructure, i.e. in another window.  This
should be easy to implement, and will allow collecting user experience
which we currently lack.  Then decision of whether we need a new UI,
and which one, will be based on something, rather than on thin air.

Look at this another way: someone suggests that we adopt a "cool
feature" seen in another editor.  That editor is for editing HTML
(which is hardly the main focus of Emacs), and the specific feature we
are discussing here is not the only one, maybe even not the most
important one, in Brackets -- just look at the videos on their site.
Suddenly we are all sure this will be seemingly cool for editing C/C++
etc., but still insist that the UI feature should look and feel the
same, without even trying.  Does this make a lot of sense?