Re: emacs mode line suggestions

[Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com>]

Ian Eure <ian@digg.com> writes:

> On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:54 PM, Xah wrote:
>
>> On Nov 15, 1:23 am, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
>>>> From:Xah<xah...@gmail.com>
>>>> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:18:31 -0800 (PST)
>>>>
>>>> • clicking on the file name should not switch buffer.
>>>
>>> That's not the file name, that's the buffer name.
>>
>> please get the over all picture, not bone picking.
>>
>>> As for what it should do, I don't see why your preference is better
>>> than the current one.  Popping a menu requires another click to
>>> actually select a buffer, whereas the current behavior does it in one
>>> click.
>>
>> typically, a user has several user buffers open, and as far as i guess
>> many programers who use emacs extensively has like hundreds of buffers
>> open. Cycling them one by one is not much useful.
>>
>> Counting emacs's own buffers, those info, messages, scratch,
>> completions, grep output, shell output, C-h f and friends output,
>> dictionary lookup output, ispell output, man page output ... etc...
>> these are typically looked once and not useful afterwards. Switching
>> and cycling thru them are not much useful.
> I basically agree with this stuff. I doubt many hardcore Emacs users
> choose to switch buffers this way, which requires using the mouse. And
> the part of the behavior that is least useful is that the switch is
> blind - you don't know what buffer you're going to get unless you know
> the current state of the buffer-list.
>
> My objection is to the idea that you don't want star buffers in the
> list. These are also used for interaction with external processes:
> *ssh: host*, *SQL: foo*, *Twit-recent*, *compilation*, *shell*,
> *Python*. It seems ill advised to exclude those from the list.

The kind of user that might want to see them is clued in enough to use a
prefix or customise their setup accordingly.

I must say I agree with Xah and the "well thats the way its always been"
kind of reply is not constructive in the slightest.