Re: Fiddling with the menus

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

[ Sorry, hit C-c C-c before it was time.  Here's the rest of the list. ]

> Emacs 22's Tool menu.

> The menu items for rmail and gnus do not work out of the box, because
> these features need operating system's support and setup that requires
> some sys admin expertise.

Agreed.  The way to fix it is to make M-x rmail and/or M-x gnus run some
kind of "wizard" to configure them.

> Today, vast majority of people use web based email services, even
> among professional programers.  Also, unlike the situation of the
> 1980s and 1990s, where most programer's “workstation” machines running
> unix are setup to run sendmail services. Today, even linux users, most
> are probably not setup to run sendmail.  Microsoft Windows, today used
> by ~95% of personal computer users world wide, does not come with
> “sendmail”.  Mac OS X uses PostFix as its MTA and is not enabled
> by default.

By "sendmail", this menu entry means sendmail.el which uses
the "sendmail" command provided by most/all MTAs, including Postfix.
Sadly, this command is commonly non-functional, so here again,
sendmail.el should run some kind of wizard to make sure that sending
email is properly configured.

> It is questionable, that the gnus and rmail should have a menu item.

These are important packages that deserve to have a visible entry point.

> For those programers who might want to use these and have the
> expertise to set it up, they can most certainly find out about these
> features online or in the Emacs documentation.  For the Emacs
> die-hards accustomized to using rmail or gnus, they never actually
> pull these menus to invoke the commands.  They simply type “M-x rmail”
> or “M-x gnus”.

Not necessarily: they may temporarily be using Emacs without access to
a keyboard.

> The game items seem a bit silly.

Maybe, but it costs just one entry.

> For Emacs to showoff a game, it should at least show a outstanding
> implementation, or some game that has merits to stands itself.  (A
> typing game implemented in elisp would be suitable, or a Emacs
> interface to GNU Go, GNU Chess,

Agreed, these would be good.

> or music player.)

Not exactly a game.

> Emacs's help menu. Extremely confusing and chaotic.

> In the Emacs's help menu, there are about 30 items. With this many
> items, they are more confusing than helpful.  Many of these are
> outdated, redundant, never used, or FSF propaganda.  The following are
> some explanation.

The Emacs maintainers consider FSF propaganda to be important.

> The content of “Emacs FAQ”, “Emacs News”, “Emacs Known Problems”, are
> about 5 or 10 years out of date.

If Emacs News is out of date, it's a bug.

The "known problems" indeed tend to be very out of date, tho not all of
them are.  We should probably split this file into sections for problems
which have been reported for specific releases (with a note that
problems in older releases may still be relevant).

The FAQ's maintenance has always been a bit problematic, indeed.  I'd be
happy to drop it.

> Similarly, the “External Packages” is hopelessly outdated.  For this,
> the emacswiki (emacswiki.org) provides far more useful resource.

We could link to some web page on www.gnu.org.  But we need someone to
keep it up-to-date.  Maybe along with ELPA.

> The “Find Emacs Packages” item has rather confusing name. After using
> Emacs 8 hours a day for 10 years, i pulled it today for the first
> time, and realized it is a keyword based search on bundled elisp
> packages. Looking at the result, it does not seems very useful. For
> example, clicking on OOP shows a bunch of modes that really have
> little to do with Object Oriented Programing. Perhaps it should go
> into the “Search Documentation” sub-menu.

This command needs a lot of work to make it useful, I find.

> The “Emacs Psychotherapist” is the forefront of AI research in the
> 1960s. (It is a implementation of ELIZA) Having it in 1980s is way
> cool. Having it in 1990s in a text editor is a novelty. Today, as
> a demo of elisp power or as a fun program, it's rather stupid.

I'd call it silly, and silliness is a quality.

> The “Getting New Versions”, “Copying Condition”, “(Non)Warranty” are
> all redundant.

I don't see how they're redundant.  But yes, “Getting New Versions”
sounds old.  It should probably link to www.gnu.org/software/emacs.

> In today's web info world, it's silly that a Emacs
> users would pull a menu to know where to get new versions.  A modern
> replacement should be “Check Update” that tells user if his Emacs is
> up to date, or better, automatically upgrade Emacs as a option.
> Such a feature is common in all modern apps.

Under GNU/Linux this doesn't belong in the application but in the
distribution, and indeed it works just fine for Emacs just like it works
for all other applications.
For other platforms, we could imagine better support for installers and
semi-automatic update, but not until someone writes them.

> The “Copying Condition” and “(Non)Warranty” are part of the licensing
> and user agreement.  No app today has it as a menu item.  All 3 items,
> are linked in the “About Emacs” menu item's doc, and that is
> sufficient and appropriate.

Oh, that's what you meant by redundant, then I think I agree.

> The “About GNU” is Richard Stallman's FSF propaganda.  Its inclusion
> in Emacs's Help menu is more about politics than as a helpful resource
> for the Emacs software.  The Emacs manual has FSF propaganda littered
> throughout already.  This menu item burdens the Help menu with another
> non-helpful item.  Again, “About Emacs” has a link to it already.

Politics matter.

> The items in “More Manuals” sub-menu, can all be gone except the “All
> Other Manuals (Info)” and the the “Lookup Subject in all manuals...”
> (info-apropos).  The “All Other Manuals (Info)” should be moved to the
> top, and serve as the one entry point for all manuals, and the
> info-apropos menu item can move to the “Search Documentation”
> sub menu.

That sounds OK.


        Stefan